Gathering Strays : University Press of Kansas : 9780700634101 : 070063410X : 21 Feb 2023 : Celebrated folklorist and author Jim Hoy has spent most of his life living in the heart of the famed Flint Hills of Kansas and documenting and celebrating his fellow Kansans and plains folk. Like rounding up stray cattle in a rolling pasture, Hoy has gathered over a hundred stray stories, tales without a single theme or unified narrative, and rounded them up here for the very first time. Branding these stories in sections like Cattle Towns, Outlaws, and Cowboy Music, Hoy's vignettes teach, excite, charm, and instill a deep pride in anyone fortunate enough to have lived on the Great Plains. In Gathering Strays, Hoy gives us a collection of stories about Kansas, the Great Plains, and Western life that reflect his life-long love of the land, experience, and history of the region. Hoy introduces us to folks like Elmer McCurdy, a failed train robber whose arsenic-embalmed body went on tour and made m