THE HANGING TREE (272 pp.)—Dorothy Johnson—Ballantine ($3.50).
Dorothy Johnson, a 51-year-old assistant professor* who looks as if she may have just talked to the ladies at the opening of a church bazaar, writes with authentic familiarity about the men who opened the American West. When the dude reader is informed by the publisher that "there is something about a Colt .44 beside the typewriter that inspires me," or that Miss Johnson won a spur from that loose-lipped but hard-writing outfit called the Western Writers of America, Inc., he may well suspect that he is...