Life's Lure

Coming four years afterThe Dawn Builder(1910), John G. Neihardt's second novel portrays the lives of Black Hills miners and of those who preyed on them.Life's Luretakes up a theme that runs throughout Neihardt's work: the consequences of an inordinate desire for wealth.The protagonists come in sets of three. On one hand there are Samuel Drake, a hapless thirty-year-old who has just squandered his inheritance in a Deadwood card game; his fickle wife Joy; and Louis Devlin, a smooth-talking, fast-fingered gentleman gambler. Devlin is not above talking about philosophy; he even paraphrases Nietzsche. On the other hand are Monte Joe, a drunken scoundrel, Punkins, a young man fresh off the farm, guileless and easy pickings; and Nellie, a mining-camp prostitute.Women and gold lure men to go on living, but Fortune is "a capricious jilt." Neihardt puts a lot of colorful characters in motion and then, along with the reader, watches them collide.

John G. Neihardt (1881-1973) had a long and distinguished career as a chronicler of the American West.