Frank Norris and Mary Austin are two Western writers whose accomplishments in short fiction have generally been neglected; critical attention has most frequently focused on their novels. Yet in studying the emergence of realism in Western literature, Norris' and Austin's tales should not be overlooked; their stories of California, in particular, achieve realism with subjects previously treated in romance.

These California tales derive from the first-hand experience of both authors. Each was born in Illinois, Austin being the older by two years, but each moved to California while in his teens: Norris to the bay area in 1884, Austin to the arid South in 1886. Both began publishing stories in 1892 based upon life in their new locale, with the works appearing in the Western magazines of the era as well as in the established Eastern monthlies: Norris' writings were published chiefly in the Overland and the Wave but also in Collier's and Everybody's; Austin's appeared in the Overland and Out West less frequently than in the Atlantic, Century, and Harper's. Before his death in 1902 Norris had published over fifty tales, with nearly half set in California—primarily in San Francisco. Through 1909 Austin wrote over thirty tales, almost all of which are set in the Mojave Desert area of the state; after that time she turned increasingly to the Southwest for her subjects.

Norris' tales, based on California urban life, convey the strange mingling of races and character types that prompted him to label San Francisco a "story city." He chronicles the experiences of a plumber's apprentice, a department store floorwalker, a Chinese flower girl, a Mexican junk dealer, an amateur boxer, and an Irish street-car conductor—to name only a few. Courtship is a predominant subject in these stories, but very few conclude happily; most have an ambiguous ending. For example, the boxer ("Short Stack, Pugilist") finds that his girl's seemingly beneficent attentions bring about his loss of a match—and of her—to his rival. The street-car conductor rescues a Mexican woman from danger, becomes intrigued by her, and questions his feelings for his girl friend; the woman's subsequent suicide relieves the awkward situation, yet leaves in doubt which one is really "Bandy Callaghan's Girl."

Several of the stories reflect Norris' well-known interest in heredity as a determining factor in man's life. "A Reversion to Type" and "Thoroughbred" show that a man's bloodline is inescapable; though he may immigrate to California, he will discover that his forebears still influence his actions. Other tales—"A Case for Lombroso," "Judy's Service of Gold Plate," and "Fantasie Printaniere" (the latter two are sketches for McTeague)—stress the degenerative effects of biracial relationships.

Austin's desert tales, in contrast, emphasize the influence of environment: "Every story of that country is colored by the fashion of the life there; breaking up in swift, passionate intervals between long, dun stretches, like the land that out of hot sinks of desolation heaves up great bulks of granite ranges . . ." ("The Lost Mine of Fisherman's Peak"). The stories focus on the casual nature of human relations, for the desert "has no use of the formal side of man's affairs." Rather than experiencing courtship, biracial couples live together for a period that is followed by mutual separation, desertion, or death. Another recurrent topic is the plight of the desert shepherd—Indian, Mexican, Basque, or Caucasian; separated from his loved ones, he seeks consolation from his flock and the outdoors, and he sometimes achieves a oneness with nature that eludes his fellow man.

The theme of familial relations gone awry pervades Austin's writings: in the treacherous desert country men are lost, children die, women who wish to be wives and mothers live wasted lives. For example, in "The Mother of Felipe" Austin describes tersely, yet sensitively, the plight of a widow mourning the unexpected death of her son. Faced with an indifferent universe ("The hills were higher and more desolate, and seemed endowed with some infernal mechanism, shutting in silently behind, and opening out noiselessly before"), she transfers her love and trust to her son's fiancée: "'We will not forget Felipe,' the two women had sobbingly protested to each other at parting." Sentimentalism of plot is then avoided by realism of situation: although the fiancée does not forget Felipe, she marries and begins a new life. Felipe's mother thus learns a bitter lesson: "Only in the hearts of mothers lives unconsolable regret."

Certain stories of Norris and Austin lend themselves to comparison. Austin's only tale set in San Francisco's Chinatown, "The Conversion of Ah Lew Sing" (1897), can be paired with Norris' earlier "After Strange Gods" (1894); both treat an unorthodox Chinese courtship but employ local details which are realistic in application. For realism of topic Norris' "The Third Circle" (1897) and Austin's "The House of Offence" (1909) are illustrative; one deals with the Chinese slave trade, the other with a mining-camp brothel. For realism of detail Norris' "Toppan" (1893) and its sequel, "The Caged Lion" (1894), might be paired with Austin's "Bitterness of Women" (1909) for their depiction of marital discontent.

Not all of Norris' and Austin's California tales belong to the realistic tradition; some of their longest stories—Norris' "The Riding of Felipe" (1901) and Austin's "The Truscott Luck" (1902)—are perhaps the most sentimental and conventional: one concludes with the happy reunion of two Mexican lovers, the other with the successful search by a miner's family for a cached treasure. There are a few other light tales by Austin which also depend upon stock situations and predictable conclusions: "The Kiss of Niño Dios" and "Spring O' the Year" are two such stories, neither of which Austin chose to collect or reprint. Yet as "serious treatments of everyday reality," Norris' and Austin's tales are more successful than the majority of stories by other authors living in California during this period and writing about the state—for example, Gertrude Atherton's Spanish-Mexican romances, Before the Gringo Came (1894), and Mary H. Foote's sentimentalized frontier tales in In Exile (1894), The Cup of Trembling (1895), and A Touch of Sun (1903).

The California stories of Norris and Austin deserve to be collected, as those of their two contemporaries have been; presently, a number of the tales remain buried in the journals in which they originally appeared. The major sources for Norris' California stories are The Third Circle and volume ten of the Complete Works, while Austin's Lost Borders and The Mother of Felipe contain many stories uniting Western color with realistic detail. At their best, the California tales of Norris and Austin represent an important milestone in Western literary realism.