A ‘Platoon’ of Women

A new Glendon Swarthout novel, “The Homesman,” set in the 1850s on the Great Plains of Nebraska, is due out in September . . . and already Paul Newman has bought film rights, Swarthout’s son, Miles, has finished the script and Disney has picked up the project, with Newman likely to star.

No director is set. Nor is casting for the five prominent female roles in the film, which the screenwriter calls “the ‘Platoon’ of Westerns--the dark side of Manifest Destiny that’s never been told.”

The story, based on historical research, revolves around a group of women, literally driven crazy by weather, loneliness, fear and other challenges of Great Plains life during territorial times, who are being transported back to families in the East.

“These depressed, violent, suicidal, demented women were locked up in stout wagons and shipped (secretly) back across the Big Muddy,” said the elder Swarthout, now 70 and living in Scottsdale, Ariz. “In my book, a low-life, unprincipaled, despicable, mercenary man hired as guide and guardian (Newman’s role) confronts extraordinary circumstances. In spite of himself, he rises to the occasion and wins.”

The elder Swarthout wrote such Westerns as “They Came to Cordura” (made into a 1959 film with Gary Cooper) and “The Shootist” (a 1976 release starring John Wayne), the latter also adapted by Swarthout’s son.