Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Big Range | 1953 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 2 | First Blood and Other Stories | 1954 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 3 | The Kean Land | 1960 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 4 | Tales from the West | 1961 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 5 | The Plainsmen | 1963 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 6 | The Collected Stories of Jack Schaefer | 1966 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
Jack Schaefer was as gifted a short story writer as he was a novelist. His collections, published between 1953 and 1966, contain dozens of stories set across the American West, from cattle ranges and mining camps to small frontier towns. The Big Range (1953), his first collection, established his reputation as a writer who could build an entire world in twenty pages. First Blood and Other Stories (1954) followed quickly, and both books show Schaefer working with the same economy and directness that made Shane so effective.
The later collections broadened his scope. The Kean Land (1960) and Tales from the West (1961) introduced new settings and character types, while The Plainsmen (1963) ranged across the full sweep of Western history. The Collected Stories of Jack Schaefer (1966) brought the best of these together in a single volume. Across all six collections, Schaefer wrote about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, always grounding his stories in the physical details of the land and the work that sustained life on it.