Tom Mix was a film star in cowboy movies from 1909 to 1935. This 1949 work, written for an audience of teenage boys, presents the character in book form. By the late 1940s, the Tom Mix character would have been known to youngsters through radio and comic books rather than films. In fact, this book includes some photos of Curley Bradley, who played the character in radio dramas from 1944 onward.

Tom Mix and the Flaming Warrior is an odd little book, one that is seriously dated politically and socially. The book has gunslingers, ranchers, cowboys, and Indians with such names as Bear Claw and Gray Eagle. There’s unrest in Indian country that may result in renewed warfare. Tom advises Bear Claw against it: “What is to be gained by the red man in a war against his white brother? Nothing. Is there any reason for such action? There might have been many years ago, but not today. Because of his white brother, the Indian today lives better than he did before. Today he has doctors to cure him when he is sick. He has schools to which his children may go to learn great wisdom just as John Beaver has done. The Indian is happier today than he ever was before. Why, then, should a few hundred rise against so many millions in fruitless warfare?”

Bear Claw is unconvinced, and at a ceremony around the campfire, he urges his fellow Sioux to rebellion. “Hear me! Our time approaches fast! When the next sun sets, we shall be dead. But it is good that we shall be so, for in our deaths we live forever in the glorious history of our tribe… We die as befits our history, we die gloriously, fighting to the last man! As it turns out, Bear Claw has been duped by a nocturnal apparition into thinking that the great Kawhenga was coming down from the heavens to lead them into battle. The apparition is of a flaming horse and rider that rides through the sky – hoisted (as it turns out) by a modern day helicopter. And the nefarious goal was to spark an uprising that would kill the Sioux, making available their land on which gold had been discovered. The plot is revealed, along with the fake Kawhenga, the superstitious natives calm down, and rebellion is averted.

This book is seriously dated, and unlikely to be of anything but historical interest to prospective readers. It is one of just three at Library Thing that stars a Tom Mix character, and the only one by this author. Oddly, another was written by the notorious Clifford Irving, published in 1982, ten years after his infamous Howard Hughes hoax. ( )