SOURCE: “Apprenticeship: New Almaden and Santa Cruz,” in Mary Hallock Foote, Twayne Publishers, 1980, pp. 27-37, 49-55, 79-84, 117-23, 155-58.

In the following excerpts from her full-length biographical and critical study of Foote, Johnson discusses the ways in which Foote's life in the West influenced her early writing; evaluates her first novel The Led-Horse Claim, her more mature novels The Chosen Valley and The Desert and the Sown, and her historical romance The Royal Americans; and provides an overall assessment of Foote's importance in American literary history.

Foote's Early Western Writings

Frontier is a beautiful word, full of history and romance. To the young men of all the generations it has been a challenge and a lure. The East was East, in my time, and the West was the Far West; and the frontier meant placer gold and lumber and wheat and of course land—all you could grasp...