Vintage Prairie Guns by E.E. Halleran – 1945 Western Novel 🤠 (Triangle Books)

Size: 8.25 x 5.5 inches ~

🚚 Free US Shipping — ships within one business day. International shipping calculated at checkout.

📚 A vintage Western novel from the mid‑20th century, this 1945 hardcover edition of Prairie Guns by E.E. Halleran was published by Triangle Books and reflects the rugged, no‑frills style of postwar frontier fiction. And this particular copy has a story of its own: it still has its dust jacket, with a Kresge's dime-store price sticker on it, and inside the cover someone wrote "To Dad ... Merry Christmas 1945." The Triangle edition came out in November 1945, so this one went straight from the five-and-dime shelf under somebody's Christmas tree.

🤠 The story

From the jacket: sharp-shooting, red-headed Terry Donovan of the Bar-O outfit gets pulled into the feud between the homesteaders and the cattlemen of the Oklahoma Territory after he rescues Sue Leonard, a "nester's" daughter, from some drunken Bar-O cowboys. Raids on Bar-O cattle, run-ins with the Indians, quarrels among the herders and the murder of an old man follow, until Terry finds out who's behind the feud and the Territory's people pull together. It's a "post Civil War west" story from the author of No Range Is Free, which is listed opposite the title page.

✍️ E.E. Halleran and the 96th Bomb Group

Eugene E. Halleran (1905–1994) taught English, math and history before he turned out more than a dozen westerns and short stories, some under the name "Eran Hall." Turn past the copyright page and you'll find his dedication: "To The 96th Bomb Group A.A.F." That was a B-17 Flying Fortress outfit of the Eighth Air Force, flying out of RAF Snetterton Heath in England from June 1943. On August 17, 1943 the 96th flew General Curtis LeMay's shuttle mission to Regensburg and won a Distinguished Unit Citation for fighting through heavy enemy fighter attacks, and it earned a second on April 9, 1944, leading its wing through clouds and flak to hit aircraft factories in Poland. A frontier novel dedicated to a bomber group is a real piece of 1944 in your hands.

🏛️ Triangle Books

Triangle Books was one of the great cheap-hardcover reprint lines: nearly 400 titles of popular fiction, mysteries and westerns, starting at 39 cents and going to 49 cents around 1943. Doubleday took the line over in 1939 and bought the Philadelphia publisher Blakiston in 1944, which is why this copy's title page reads "The Blakiston Company, Philadelphia" and the copyright page says "Triangle Books Edition Published November 1945, by arrangement with Macrae-Smith Company," the Philadelphia house that first published it in 1944. It was printed and bound by the American Book–Stratford Press in New York.

And Kresge's, where it was bought: S.S. Kresge's five-and-dime chain, the company that later became Kmart.

Details:
• Title: Prairie Guns
• Author: E.E. Halleran (Eugene E. Halleran)
• Publisher: Triangle Books / The Blakiston Company (Philadelphia)
• Edition: Triangle Books edition, November 1945 (copyright 1944)
• Format: Hardcover with dust jacket
• Approx. Size: 8¼″ × 5½″

Condition Note (Important):
Pages show visible insect damage (bookworm holes) consistent with age. Text remains readable throughout. Covers show light wear. The dust jacket is worn and chipped, with the Kresge's sticker on it. This copy is best suited as a reading or reference copy rather than a collector‑grade example. Please review all photos carefully.

📦 Packaging
Ships securely with protective padding.