Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stubby Pringle’s Christmas | 1964 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
Stubby Pringle’s Christmas stands apart from most of Jack Schaefer’s work. Where Shane and Monte Walsh deal in the hard realities of frontier life, this 1964 novella is warm, funny, and openly sentimental. The story follows young cowboy Stubby Pringle as he rides out on Christmas Eve, full of energy and looking forward to a local dance. Along the way he comes across a widow and her children alone in a snowbound cabin, and what happens next is a small, genuine act of human goodness.
The novella was originally published in a magazine and later released as a standalone book. It became one of Schaefer’s most reprinted works, often appearing in holiday anthologies and school reading lists. For readers who know Schaefer only through Shane, Stubby Pringle’s Christmas reveals an author comfortable writing with humor and heart, without losing the clean, direct style that defined all his Western fiction.