Masterpieces of Adventure
Stories of Desert Places
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Masterpieces of Adventure
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Narrated by:
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Jack de Golia
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By:
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Nella Braddy
About this listen
Nella Braddy (1894-1973), a pioneer among female editors, compiled this seven-story collection, and published Masterpieces of Adventure: Stories of Desert Places in 1922. It features seven authors: Edgerton Castle, Stephen Crane, Selma Lagerlöf, Bret Harte, Thomas Hardy, O. Henry, and W. H. Hudson. It’s a stellar group.
Braddy went on to write and edit more articles and books, including two more in the Masterpieces of Adventure series; one focused on Helen Keller’s breakthrough teacher, Anna Sullivan Macy; and a biography of Rudyard Kipling.
Once inside Stories of Desert Places, though, listeners will soon realize that Braddy treats the idea of “desert” very loosely. Perhaps it’s about what’s in a protagonist’s mind or heart, rather than the actual setting of the story that Braddy felt evoked the idea of “desert".
It’s left to us to find the “desert” - physical or metaphorical - of an eastern European castle on a snowy night, somewhere in the American West, Norway, early day California, a rainy night in England, in Texas near the Rio Grande, and Argentina. In these stories, people strive, often foolishly, and yet they persevere in unexpected ways.
Public Domain (P)2020 Spoken RealmsCritic reviews
"This fascinating audio collection of desert stories was compiled by an early-twentieth-century female editor. The wide-ranging cast of lively characters listeners meet through these works requires a top-notch narrator, and Jack de Golia delivers. He's as comfortable singing in Spanish as he is parlaying rowdy ranch gossip, emoting the gruffness of the wilderness, or setting a creepy mood on a dark and stormy night. (Thomas Hardy has never sounded more suspenseful.) But it is the blithe cruelty, the caustic casualness, with which de Golia delivers talk of the U.S. "Indian extermination" policy that feels most chillingly realistic. Listeners can't help but ponder the geographical and metaphorical experience of life in these isolated landscapes." J.T. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2021]