A journey from Old Europe to the New West

Donna Rifkin of The Washington Post has high praise for The German Bride, Joanna Hershon's ambitious novel about "a German Jewish woman named Eva Frank who, after a hasty marriage in 1865, leaves her wealthy father's mansion in Berlin to pursue a new life among the 'low mud-cake hovels' of the American West. Accompanied by her husband, Eva journeys across the ocean and then across the United States to set up housekeeping in Santa Fe, a makeshift, dirty, danger-ridden settlement that was just beginning to organize itself into a town." Vanity Fair asked Hershon who she would cast in a film adaptation of her book, and she replies here.

A double dose of Nashville Star

NBC has signed a deal with the Country Music Television cable network allowing CMT to repeat -- er, excuse me, I mean repurpose -- episodes of Nashville Star four days after their broadcast premieres. Nashville Star -- formerly a mainstay at the USA Network -- returns for its sixth season June 9 on NBC, with Billy Ray Cyrus as host.

Readin' and writin' and... ridin'?

Obviously, Tennessee school officials have zero tolerance for students who try to horse around before graduation.

Next stop: Australia

A very pregnant Nicole Kidman appeared on the red carpet (alongside husband Keith Urban) at Sunday's 43rd annual Academy of Country Music Awards. Fans may not get another up-close look at the actress until November, when she'll be seen opposite co-star Hugh Jackman (above) in Australia, an epic drama about a World War II-era cattle drive across hundreds of miles of the most unforgiving land in The Land Down Under.

R.I.P.: Oakley Hall (1920-2008)

From The New York Times: "Oakley Hall, the author of the novels Warlock and The Downhill Racers and a literary heir to fellow California writers like Wallace Stegner, died Monday at his home in Nevada City, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Nevada City, Squaw Valley and San Francisco... Mr. Hall, who began his career writing tightly constructed mystery novels, produced a steady stream of works, most set in the American West, of which the best known is Warlock (1958), a fictional reimagining of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Called 'one of our best American novels' in a Holiday magazine review by Thomas Pynchon, it was made into a film of the same name with Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda." There's more on Hall here and here.

Thank you, C&I readers!

Here at the C&I Corral, we're celebrating our 15th anniversary with an announcement of our record circulation growth. The Premier Magazine of the West is reporting a 22 percent increase in average paid circulation in the second half of 2007, achieving an all-time high circulation level of 147,400 (compared to 121,105 in 2006). All of which means that, using the formula of 5.2 readers per copy, as determined by the Magazine Publishers Association, Cowboys & Indians now has an average of 766,480 readers for each issue. Yippie-ti- yi-yay!

James Stewart centennial

To celebrate the May 20 centennial of James Stewart's birth, Turner Classic Movies will offer a marathon of the superstar's films -- including, naturally, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance -- and Universal Home Video will release James Stewart: The Western Collection, a boxed set of DVDs including Destry Rides Again, Winchester '73, Bend of the River, The Far Country, Night Passage and The Rare Breed. But wait, there's more: Critic Mick LaSalle pays tribute to the great man here.