As much as I believe that the story of a skeptic forced to confront the paranormal is a very solid concept, I know that Dad also wanted to write a full-bore adventure story. He wanted to go to the other world and see it through the eyes of his hero. Given that fact, I have always wondered if my best advice might have been to suggest a character who was more of a man of action and who had a different personal issue to be resolved.
Regardless, I worry that a reader of The Haunted Mesa can feel the conflict between these earlier and later versions: Is the story going to be about Mike the skeptic having to finally confront his personal fears or Mike the action hero heading off into an alien world to save his friend? There is no question that The Haunted Mesa eventually ended up following the latter path, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if that half-remembered or partially discarded early draft didn’t continue to cause Dad some concern about the overall direction of the story. I also wouldn’t be surprised if this sort of unresolved ghost of an idea doesn’t haunt countless manuscripts by many different writers.
I realized much of this while working on my Haunted Mesa film and TV experiment. In the end, the version where Mike finds Eric cut in half by the closing of the portal between worlds would work wonderfully for a spooky feature with a modest budget. For a TV series, where Mike would spend many episodes on the “other side,” I chose to make Mike a retired Special Forces officer, a man dealing with PTSD and chafing from the confines of civilization—someone more capable of going solo into hostile territory and surviving.
* * *
—
Throughout the fall of ’86, Louis forged ahead, but it was an agonizing process, full of the sort of misgivings from which his career had always been remarkably free. Here are some of his journal entries from that time:
Anxious to complete MESA, hope it is good, and to get on with something else. My mind is not quite tuned to MESA right now. A few weeks one way or the other would have made a difference, I think. I needed to work on something else after BREED.
I shall complete MESA this week, I think. Not a good job, however.
Must finish this book, and get to clearing the decks here…I have 20 books I very much want to write…That is my problem: always there are ideas, they throng my brain, each demanding to be written.
Even though The Haunted Mesa contains no small amount of that Louis L’Amour magic—that ability to fire the imagination and involve the reader—and even though it was eventually a number one bestseller, selected by the Literary Guild and beloved by many readers, Louis almost didn’t publish it. At one point, not too long before it was due, he wrote the following:
May hold back on HAUNTED MESA. Am not sure if it is any good or not. I got off the deep end on this one and it may need some work. Too bad. Everybody set for it and a beautiful cover set for it with a painting by Clifford Brycelea, my Navajo friend.
That may not sound like a particularly negative attitude, but for Louis, a constant optimist—and a man who always delivered on time—it’s pretty significant. He even considered asking Bantam to swap in another novel that he had stashed away. But in the end he decided that the possible replacement was even less ready for publication than The Haunted Mesa…so he agreed to move ahead.
Though he was rarely happy with any book during the writing of its last few chapters, his last journal entry on the subject of The Haunted Mesa shows a continuing wistfulness:
Book selling well. No. 2 on NY Times list. Some don’t like it, some do. I was unsure about this one, knew I was gambling, but wished to do it. Not as good as I wanted it to be…
It might not have been as good as he wanted it to be, but many have found The Haunted Mesa to be an enjoyable read and one of the more intriguing explorations of the “Weird West” subgenre. More important, however, it was part of a highly significant set of personal milestones.
For thirty years Louis had been trying to break away from writing traditional Westerns. He had attempted to write contemporary thrillers and historical novels in the 1950s and gotten nowhere. In the 1960s he managed to sell transitional works that dealt with Western Americans in Europe and Europeans in the American West—but it was unclear if doing so had actually bought him any freedom. By the 1970s Dad had managed to expand the definition of his genre from that of the mid- to late-nineteenth century to all of the early frontier. Finally, between 1984 and 1987, with The Walking Drum, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa, three very different novels in three completely different genres, he was able to prove he could be a bestselling author in any category he chose. Though he had many more planned, the success of those three titles defied expectations and fulfilled the dreams and aspirations of a lifetime.
For more information on The Haunted Mesa and photographs of No Man’s Mesa and Johnnie’s Hole, visit louislamourslosttreasures.com and click on “Website Exclusives,” followed by “Additional Materials.”
Beau L’Amour
October 2019
Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour
NOVELS
Bendigo Shafter
Borden Chantry
Brionne
The Broken Gun
The Burning Hills
The Californios
Callaghen
Catlow
Chancy
The Cherokee Trail
Comstock Lode
Conagher
Crossfire Trail
Dark Canyon
Down the Long Hills
The Empty Land
Fair Blows the Wind
Fallon
The Ferguson Rifle
The First Fast Draw
Flint
Guns of the Timberlands
Hanging Woman Creek
Heller with a Gun
The High Graders
High Lonesome
Hondo
How the West Was Won
The Iron Marshal
The Key-Lock Man
Kid Rodelo
Kilkenny
Killoe
Kilrone
Kiowa Trail
Last of the Breed
Last Stand at Papago Wells
The Lonesome Gods
The Man Called Noon
The Man from Skibbereen
The Man from the Broken Hills
Matagorda
Milo Talon
The Mountain Valley War
North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side
Passin’ Through
The Proving Trail
The Quick and the Dead
Radigan
Reilly’s Luck
The Rider of Lost Creek
Rivers West
The Shadow Riders
Shalako
Showdown at Yellow Butte
Silver Canyon
Sitka
Son of a Wanted Man
Taggart
The Tall Stranger
To Tame a Land
Tucker
Under the Sweetwater Rim
Utah Blaine
The Walking Drum
Where the Long Grass Blows
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Beyond the Great Snow Mountains
Bowdrie
Bowdrie’s Law
Buckskin Run
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour (vols. 1–7)
Dutchman’s Flat
End of the Drive
From the Listening Hills
The Hills of Homicide
Law of the Desert Born
Long Ride Home
Lonigan
May There Be a Road
Monument Rock
Night Over the Solomons
Off the Mangrove Coast
The Outlaws of Mesquite
The Rider of the Ruby Hills
Riding for the Brand
The Strong Shall Live
The Trail to Crazy Man
Valley of the Sun
War Party
West from Singapore
West of Dodge
With These Hands
Yondering
SACKETT TITLES
Sackett’s Land
To the Far Blue Mountains
The Warrior’s Path
Jubal Sackett
Ride the River
The Daybreakers
Sackett
Lando
Mojave Crossing
Mustang Man
The Lonely Men
Galloway
Treasure Mountain
Lonely on the Mountain
Ride the Dark Trail
The Sackett Brand
The Sky-Liners
THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS
The Riders of High Rock
The Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
Trouble Shooter
NONFICTION
Education of a Wandering Man
Frontier
The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels
A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
LOST TREASURES
Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1 (with Beau L’Amour)
No Traveller Returns (with Beau L’Amour)
ABOUT LOUIS L’AMOUR
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way
I’d like to be remembered—as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and a desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and officer in the Transportation Corps during World War II. He was a voracious reader and collector of books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for the many frontier and adventure stories he wrote for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available from Random House Audio.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.