B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American Old West. These are her stories.

There is a certain malady of the mind induced by too much of one thing. Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West calls cabin fever. True it parades under different names, according to circumstances and caste. You may be afflicted in a palace and call it ennui, and it may drive you to commit peccadilloes and indiscretions of various sorts. You may be attacked in a middle-class apartment house, and call it various names, and it may drive you to cafe life and affinities and alimony.

Trailblazing female Western writer Bertha Muzzy Bower wrote a series of pulse-pounding novels about the grizzled vaqueros and cowpokes who populated the Flying U Ranch. This novel follows the crew as a territorial conflict emerges with a neighboring group of sheep ranchers. Fleshed out with meticulous details about the period and plenty of action, Flying U Ranch is a must-read for fans of the genre.

Pioneering Western writer Bertha Muzzy Bower was herself the wife of a Montana rancher for a time, so she brings a wealth of personal experience and psychological insight to this gripping narrative that follows protagonist Valeria as she enters into marriage and struggles with the often-harsh reality of rural life.

A Story of the Old California Days in 1849: If you would glimpse the savage which normally lies asleep, thank God, in most of us, you have only to do this thing of which I shall tell you, and from some safe sanctuary where leaden couriers may not bear prematurely the tidings of man's debasement, watch the world below. You may see civilization swing back with a snap to savagery and worse - because savagery enlightened by the civilization of centuries is a deadly thing to let loose among men. Our savage forebears were but superior animals groping laboriously after economic security and a social condition that would yield most prolifically the fruit of all the world's desire, happiness; to-day, when we swing back to something akin to savagery, we do it for lust of gain, like our forebears, but we do it wittingly.

1917. With frontispiece by H. Weston Taylor. Bower authored several Westerns including Cabin Fever and The Flying U Ranch. The Lookout Man begins: From the obscurity of vast, unquiet distance the surf came booming in with the heavy impetus of high tide, flinging long streamers of kelp and bits of driftwood over the narrowing stretch of sand where garishly costumed bathers had lately shrieked hilariously at their gambols. Before the chill wind that had risen with the turn of the tide the bathers retreated in dripping, shivering groups, to appear later in fluffs and furs and woolen sweaters; still inclined to hilarity, still undeniably loth to leave off their pleasuring at Venice, dedicated to cheap pleasures. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.