Masterpieces of Adventure: STORIES OF DESERT PLACES By Nella Braddy: Popular Books by Nella Braddy : All times Bestseller Demanding Books

In these volumes the word adventure has been used in its broadest sense to cover not only strange happenings in strange places but also love and life and death - all things that have to do with the great adventure of living. Questions as to the fitness of a story were settled by examining the qualities of the narrative as such rather than by reference to a technical classification of short stories.

Masterpieces of Adventure: Stories of Desert Places

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.

Masterpieces of Adventure: Stories of Desert Places

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.

Masterpieces of Adventure: Stories of Desert Places

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.”

Masterpieces of Adventure: Stories of Desert Places

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.

Masterpieces of Adventure: Stories of Desert Places