Margins
Anything Goes book cover
Anything Goes
2015
First Published
3.38
Average Rating
384
Number of Pages

The enchanting story of a vaudeville troupe that makes its way to Western mining towns, from reknowned master of the Western novel, Richard S. Wheeler The cowboys, gold miners, outlaws, gunmen, prostitutes, and marshals who populate the Wild West never see much big-city entertainment. Those Western towns are too wild and rowdy for entertainers to enter, let alone perform in them. All that is about change. August Beausoleil and his colleague, Charles Pomerantz, have taken the Beausoleil Brothers Follies to the remote mining towns of Montana, far from the powerful impresarios who own the talent and control the theaters on the big vaudeville circuits. Their cast includes a collection of has-beens and second-tier performers: Mary Mabel Markey, once queen of the boards but now a little out of breath; Wayne Windsor, “The Profile,” who favors his audiences with just one side of his face while needling them with acerbic dialogue; Harry the Juggler, who went from tossing teacups to tossing scimitars; Mrs. McGivers and her capuchin monkey band; and the Wildroot Sisters, born to show business and managed by a stage mother who drives August mad. Though the towns are starved for entertainment, the Follies struggles to fill seats as it grinds from town to town. Just when the company is desperate for fresh talent, a mysterious young woman astonishes everyone with her exquisite voice. The Wild West will never be the same. They've seen comics, gorgeous singers, scimitar-tossing jugglers. Now if the troupers can only make it back East . . . alive!

Avg Rating
3.38
Number of Ratings
26
5 STARS
19%
4 STARS
38%
3 STARS
15%
2 STARS
15%
1 STARS
12%
goodreads

Author

Richard S. Wheeler
Richard S. Wheeler
Author · 54 books

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information. There are other authors with this name. One writes Marine Corps history. Another, Civil War history. Another writes in the political sciences. Richard S. (Shaw) Wheeler was born in Milwaukee in 1935 and grew up in nearby Wauwatosa.

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved