Novelist Chris Hannan chooses his “top 10 tales of the American frontier.”
I suppose when you think of the frontier – any frontier, a gold rush or an oil workers' camp – the people are the same size but somehow the place is lonelier and seems bigger, and that makes people go just a little bit mad. The American west in 1862 was – in terms of suicide, drug consumption, divorce and sexual freedom – a hundred years ahead of its time. What went on in their heads? Then, when I started writing Missy, I got interested in other writers and all their completely different ideas of the frontier ... – Chris Hannan, The Guardian
