The black rider and other stories

by Frederick Faust

The Black Rider and Other Stories collects three short novels and one short story by Max Brand originally published in magazines and never reprinted before; they appear here for the first time in book form. At first publication the stories often suffered from editors' cuts to make them fit available page space. Editor Jon Tuska has returned to the original manuscripts to restore Brand's full texts. The stories are set in that land Brand calls the "mountain desert," a timeless and magical place for him. In addition to mapping a geographic region, these stories show the extent to which Brand was exploring the corridors of the human spirit. The story of Lucia d'Arquista's confrontation with her own soul, "The Black Rider," originally published in 1925, is set in Spanish California at the time when the eastern colonies of this country were still ruled by Great Britain. The feud between Red Macdonald and the Gregory clan disrupts the quiet town of Sudeth in "The Dream of Macdonald" (1923).