With a smile as broad and as bright as the Arizona sun he grew up under, western author Dusty Richards accepted the Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Western Novel and said with a tip of his hat, “Thank God for the Cowboy Hall of Fame!”

The National Cowboy Museum honored the Ozarks Electric director with this year’s Outstanding Western Novel prize. The Western Heritage Awards recognize artists who keep the spirit of the American West alive through books, songs, films or television. The awards are in their 49th year and have recognized such western literary icons as Elmer Kelton, Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy.
Richards’s book, The Sundown Chaser, follows the life of Herschel Baker, a Montana sheriff who is forced to deal with a horse thief who just happens to be the father who abandoned Herschel when he was a boy. The book is the third installation in a series of five.

Richards has dreamed of writing western novels since he was a boy watching his cowboy heroes on Saturday afternoon movies. He started the cowboy dream when his family moved to Arizona: He had a horse of his own, worked on ranches and competed in rodeos. One memory is still vivid after half a century.

“I had a chance to visit Zane Grey’s cabin when I was trout fishing,” Richards says. “I asked the lady who owned the land if I could go sit on the cabin porch. When she asked why, I told her because one day, I’d be on a shelf next to Zane Grey. She told me, “Go ahead—something might rub off.’”
It worked—Richards is a prolific western writer with several trophies on his shelf. In addition to the Wrangler, a handsome bronze sculpture of a cowboy astride a horse that is awarded to each Heritage winner, Richards has won awards from the Oklahoma Writers Federation and the Western Writers of America. He won two Spur Awards in 2007. The Cowboy Symposium in Lubbock recognized Richards with the Cowboy Culture Award for his achievements in western writing and for helping aspiring authors hone their craft. This summer Richards’s book, Texas Blood Feud, won the Will Rogers Medallion award for best fiction of the year.

The secret to his success is simple: His books are about people. Richards’s life has been about people, too, helping them to find their way, promoting the western way of life and simply being a good neighbor. The heroes in his books don’t seem much different than the 72-year-old author, who worked on ranches and cowboyed as a teenager, tried his hand at being a bull rider, became a rodeo announcer and auctioneer and finally took a shot at his lifelong dream.

“You have to have a real, strong, hero,” he says. “In some ways, that hero has to be bigger than life. That hero has to have a cause, and you have to let the reader see that hero succeed or fail. It’s the conflicts that keep you hooked.”

Richards’ road to western writing took him many places before his first book was published. He was a rodeo announcer, a licensed auctioneer and worked in management at Tyson Foods for 33 years. He toiled away at his dream job for 10 years before his first book was published in 1992. Noble’s Way follows the efforts of a man named McCurtain who is trying to find a place where he won’t be persecuted.

His first professional nod of approval came from the Oklahoma Writers Federation in 2003. He won the Fiction Book of the Year Award for The Natural. The book chronicled the life of a present day rodeo announcer who meets a rookie bull rider from Arkansas. Richard’s 20 years with the Rodeo of the Ozarks helped flesh out the story. A year later, Richards’s book written under the name Ralph Compton won the same award. Ralph Compton was a popular western writer who had several books on the New York Times bestseller list. Dusty Richards was one of a few writers hired to carry on Compton’s story lines after he passed away in 1999.

Richards and his wife Pat spend hours researching each book, often using firsthand accounts such as diaries and letters to put palatable facts with his colorful fiction. He keeps a journal of folks he meets and often uses some of their mannerisms or characteristics to give life to his imaginary characters.

“You got to give them detail,” Richards says. “You have to let readers know how the characters feel. They ought to be able to feel the sand behind the hero or heroine’s teeth.”

And unlike many of his counterparts, Richards writes about strong, independent women of the west.
“The women I know can do want a man can do. I don’t figure it was that much different back then. Research and history show how tough women were. They didn’t always need rescuing or saving; many of them could get by on their own just fine,” he explains.

Richards is currently working on finishing his 100th novel for publication. No doubt he pauses from time to time to reflect on the life of a teenage boy who sat on a long-dead western author’s cabin steps, dreaming of the day when he could take his own place in the annuals of Western literary history.