Mary Hallock Foote

Mary Hallock Foote
Mary Hallock Foote (1847–1938) was an American author and illustrator known for her works depicting life in the American West. She wrote novels, short stories, and illustrated books, drawing heavily from her experiences living in mining towns with her engineer husband. Some of her notable works include "The Led-Horse Claim" and "The Desert and the Sown." Her writings offer a unique perspective on Western expansion, blending romance with realistic depictions of frontier life.

Author's Books:


A TOUCH OF SUN I The five-o'clock whistle droned through the heat. Its deep, consequential chest-note belonged by right to the oldest and best paying member of the Asgard group, a famous mining property of northern California. The Asgard Company owned a square league of prehistoric titles on the western slope of the foot-hills,—land enough for the preservation of a natural park within its own... more...

IN EXILE I. Nicky Dyer and the schoolmistress sat upon the slope of a hill, one of a low range overlooking an arid Californian valley. These sunburnt slopes were traversed by many narrow footpaths, descending, ascending, winding among the tangle of poison-oak and wild-rose bushes, leading from the miners' cabins to the shaft-houses and tunnels of the mine which gave to the hills their only... more...

A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS It was an evening of sudden mildness following a dry October gale. The colonel had miscalculated the temperature by one log—only one, he declared, but that had proved a pitchy one, and the chimney bellowed with flame. From end to end the room was alight with it, as if the stored-up energies of a whole pine-tree had been sacrificed in the consumption of that four-foot stick.... more...