Writers of the Purple Sage

The correspondence between two hard-talkin’ pals can cover a lot of turf. Imagine if Thelma and Louise had been avid letter-writers.

The poetic letters in “Calamity and Belle: Cowgirl Correspondence by Calamity Wronsky and Belle Bendall, illustrated by Bill Schenck (Gibbs Smith: $17.95; 50 pp.) are honest, funny and sad; they are also always simple, always smart.

This is true cowgirl grit: the sensibility is so female it’s, well, macho (macha?). “Life’s a Bitch! Naw, she’s a cowgirl . . . and ain’t she got the spurs and brandin’ irons to prove it?”

Female bonding, a girl knows, can be intoxicating, whether she’s too young to drive or old enough, like Calamity, to be “looking more like Loretta Lynn every day . . . how humiliatin’. All the Oil of Olay in the world can’t stop it.”

The intimacy of women dishing their men is intense (at times too intense to quote here). And Calamity and Belle do go back and forth (“ . . . you said, ‘Who’s that buzzard-eatin’ fool?’ But I know you liked him.”).

They also share a perception that real women don’t eat sentiment. Calamity writes Belle: “Dontcha hate the way people get all sappy when someone they didn’t even know dies, like they haven’t seen that skeleton face grinning underneath the surface of their own skin every time they looked in the mirror since they were about twenty-seven?”)

This little book is plain ol’ fun--the colorful, comics-like illustrations are as vivid as the prose. The book is studded with interactive “mementos” such as a Pony Express telegram from Grandma Belle, and a copy of Calamity’s vote for the fat Elvis postage stamp.

But it’s a whole lot more. It’s a valentine to a girl’s best friend (and we’re not talkin’ diamonds, babe). Girlsfriends 4-Ever. Yeeee-Haaaa!!!

--Danielle Roter

“Actually, it’s a kind of epistolary verse novel with two authors.”

--Calamity

“Who’s Pistol Larry?”

--Belle