High Plains Justice

Review of High Plains Justice by Maryk Lewis

Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com:

Hot lead flew, and blood flowed freely in 1859. The Cheyenne were raiding. When outlaws gunned down two sleepy cowpokes, and rode off with a thousand Texas longhorns, their main problem was what to do with the slow-moving cattle. Johnnie Bell’s problem lay in getting them back. The army couldn’t help — they had the marauding Indians to deal with. Texas Rangers had no jurisdiction once the cattle were over the border, and other settlers had their own homes and herds to guard. Luckily for Johnnie, he had two Comanche friends with points to prove, and along the way he met up with a feisty widow woman, who had lost both husband and herd to the self-same rustlers.

My Review:

Sorry again for the long absence but thankfully the book I pulled out of my Nook this week, or rather last week, to read, was rather short. Otherwise I might have taken twice as long to post this review since it would have taken me twice as long to read. The good news is that this new class I am taking at the university is teaching me new things so you should probably expect some changes in the future. For example, this week I have changed the font. Not earth shattering, I know, but hey, it’s something.

Anyway, back to the review. Our story this week seemed at first to be your run of the mill Western which takes place in Texas. We have Johnnie Bell, our main character, out one day minding his own business herding cattle when he encounters a problem. Some men come from out of nowhere and steal their cattle. Like I said a run of the mill Western.

The fun comes when he and his coworkers decide to go after them. Law enforcement officials are busy, very busy with “trouble at the border.” Then they discover that there are others in the area that have also had cattle stolen. One of them lost his life and left behind a wife. Enter Mary-Lou. She has a reputation of someone who has lived a sheltered life on southern plantation with no head for herding cattle but she’s about to prove them all wrong.

With the army and other law enforcement busy with the border, the men and one woman must take it upon themselves to discover who took their cattle, track them down, and get their cattle back. And they all have a lot invested in the outcome of this sad business.

The story overall was a good one. There were some typos that I noticed but they didn’t detract from the story too much. Also interesting was the use of British spellings which tells me one of two things:

• The writer is British or from a country that uses British spellings (that is not the USA)
• The book was published in England or a country which uses British spellings.

Keeping those two possibilities in mind, it is interesting to think that this story might have been written by someone who is not American. That seems unusual to me so I found it interesting.

The story was interesting and not too drawn out. Overall, I found it to be interesting. It was a good, clean story even if it wasn’t great. Worth a read since it’s free.

DeWitt's Strike

Review of DeWitt's Strike by Greg Hunt

Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: As they rode into the canyon called Bloody Run, Ridge Parkman heard Rafferty mutter urgently, "Here it comes."
In the narrow canyon the dynamite blast was ear-shattering. The powerful explosion hurled chunks of shattered rock at Ridge and his companion with lightning speed.
Ridge's horse squealed, whirled in panic, and went down, throwing him out of the saddle and against the canyon's rock wall ten feet away.
Ridge Parkman had signed on to fight the bandits preying on DeWitt's Strike. Now, as darkness claimed him, he wondered if he'd even live to see them.

My Review:

It is back to the Old West with DeWitt’s Strike which features one Ridge Parkman, a US Marshal in disguise, as our main character.

Parkman comes to a town know as DeWitt’s Strike in Colorado during the gold rush period. The town has been having trouble sending what gold they have been able to mine out so that the miners and other interested parties can make some money off of it.

The thieves and outlaws always seem to know when the gold will be shipped out and they promptly steal it from the wagons before they can make it out of the area. This is especially strange since it seems like there are only three or four people who are privy to that information. So Ridge, along with everyone else, wonders is someone feeding that information to the thieves or are the thieves just very observant?

That is what he aims to find out. Meanwhile he tries to keep a low profile to appear as non-threatening as possible.

The story itself is very entertaining and not too violent. I like the fact that the author puts us in the story right away rather than resorting to the back story of Ridge Parkman as a US Marshal. At first he seems like an ordinary drifter as is his intention. Only later do we discover his real purpose for coming to DeWitt’s Strike and why he wants to keep it a secret.

I’ll admit that it was a little confusing at first but the exciting beginning kept me hooked. Later my loyalty was rewarded with a great story.

I liked the characters and the mystery behind it. And it doesn’t take place in your typical Western location. I hope to continue the series at some point and I recommend it to my readers who like Westerns.

Contains: some language but not a lot

The Jailer's Son

Review of The Jailer's Son: The Legend Begins by S. A. Ferkey 

Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: A boy becomes a man before his time...

Maxwell Beck is no average boy. Thanks to his pa's insistence, he's a sharpshooter, sleight of hand artist, acrobat, and cardsharp. These are handy, yet highly unusual skills for the son of a traveling salesman. Even so, Max thinks he's living a normal life, until one fateful day when he inadvertently sets a chain of events into motion.

My Review:

Surprisingly, I am back to Western genre again this week with this new story, the first in a series. This was a free one that I thought I would take a chance on and it seems that normally the free ones are the first in a series.

Our main character is a young fifteen year old named Max. One day as his father takes him out to teach him something (as he was frequently wont to do), Max accidentally shoots him.

As it becomes apparent that his father will soon be dead, he begins to tell him things about his past life and childhood. The most important fact that his father tells him is that he needs to go to Deadwood to meet up with a man named Turtle.

Determined to save his father’s life since he is still in denial about his father’s imminent death, he does as he asks, taking his father to Deadwood with the help of his Indian friend, Hinto. As he reaches the town he immediately encounters Turtle who is none too pleased to see him or his father. Max immediately decides that he wants nothing to do with Turtle or the town of Deadwood.

The story is entertaining. I like the characters but what I think I liked the most was that it was told from the point of view of a fifteen year old boy. Thus you could say that it is also a YA or maybe a YA Western if there is such a thing.

It makes perfect sense for the time period also that although Max gets a lot of teasing for his younger looking appearance, in most ways. His life is that of a man. He eventually gets a job as ranch hand where he becomes more like a son to the owner but while he has many adult responsibilities, he also has many teenage characteristics such as a first crush on a local and a general longing for his dead parents.

The plot is also interesting and yet not too violent. This is a typical Western though perhaps not an R-rated one, so it could make a good gift for a teenager in your family or for you if you are a teenager. I’d like to read the next in the series, if I ever have the money to buy it.

Contains: some violence and language

True Grit

Review of True Grit by Charles Portis

Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: It tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.

True Grit is eccentric, cool, straight, and unflinching, like Mattie herself. From a writer of true cult status, this is an American classic through and through. 

My Review:

First, I have to start off by apologizing to my regular readers for not posting a review on this past Saturday. The fact is that I was attending a writer’s conference in Washington, NC and was working at my day job quite a bit before that. I just didn’t have the time. Anyway, it was just as well since I also lacked the time to completely finish reading what is now this week’s book and therefore couldn’t have review it anyway.

Now on with the review. I had seen both versions of this book in movie form and had liked them but never, until now, had a read the book. I mention this to let my readers know that I was not ignorant of the story.

However I was ignorant of the voice of both the author and his chosen narrator, our protagonist, Mattie Ross. Miss Ross tells her story as an older and perhaps wiser woman. Her words reveal as much about who she really is (and was) as a person.

And what do we get from her telling of her efforts to track down the man who shot and killed her unarmed but well-meaning, if not interfering father? We, or at least I, find her to be courageous, determined, matter-of-fact, and no nonsense kind of women.

She believes more in the idea of an Old Testament eye-for-an-eye philosophy as well as revenge in her personal dealings with Tom Chaney yet she also expresses a belief in Calvinist theology if I am not misunderstanding her declaration on page 119. She says:

 “That is all right but they are not sound on Election. They do not fully accept it. I confess it is a hard doctrine, running contrary to our earthly ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it.”

The title True Grit seems to be as much a description of her as it is of Rooster Cogburn who she hires solely for his uncompromising meanness towards those who come up against the law.

Of course you do get a sense of that in the movie but I would say that it comes through more loudly and clearly in the novel. Mattie does very little to hid it with her style of telling the story exactly as she sees it and she frequently emphasizes her points with exclamation points. She is definitely not politically correct and that is one of the things that I love about her.

The story itself is also amazing as well as the other characters. LaBoeuf (pronounced LaBeef), the handsome Texas lawman, is as compelling of a character as he is initially much like Rooster Cogburn. But Cogburn seems more willing overlook some of his principals for money.

The most interesting thing about the story in the end is not the great adventure of the story itself but the bond that these three forge as a result of their shared experience. At the same time, if you want to enjoy this story as just another Action Adventure/Western I don’t think that Mattie Ross style or strong opinions get away with that in the slightest, even if she does overuse the exclamation points!

Stallions at Burnt Rock

           


Review of Stallions at Burnt Rock by Paul Bagdon


Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: Lee Morgan dreams of raising the ideal ranch horse-one that has speed, stamina, and heart. On her Texas spread near the town of Burnt Rock, the high-spirited woman heads her own horse ranch operation. It's an unusual occupation for a female in the 1870s, but as an expert horsewoman and a crack shot with a rifle, she's quite adept at taking care of herself.
Determined to gain fame for her fine horses, Lee agrees to enter her magnificent coal-black stallion in a match race, never dreaming she's about to set into motion a string of events that will threaten herself, her ranch, and her friend-town marshall, Ben Flood. As gamblers, gunslingers, and shysters descend on Burnt Rock to bet on the now-famous race, Lee comes face-to-face with sinister men who seek to destroy her plans. Her true courage and strong faith shine through when she embarks on the most thrilling ride of her life.
The first in a series of western novels, Stallions at Burnt Rock is a masterfully spun tale of a strong, virtuous heroine. It will captivate romance novel enthusiasts as well as fans of westerns and adventure.

My Review:

Lee Morgan, a young woman living in Texas in the late 1800’s, is an oddity for her time. She runs a horse ranch where she dreams of breeding the perfect ranch horse.

This book is also an oddity, a Western with little graphic violence, no profanity, a female protagonist and minimal shooting.

The plot was a little slow getting starting. It seemed like the beginning served mostly as an introduction to our main character, her staff and friends, and her horses. When Lee hesitantly agrees with her old friend and fellow horse breeder, Jonas, to conduct a horse race that pits their best stallions against each other in an effort to attract buyers for their horses, things start to pick up.

The promise of a race seems to attract all kinds of low-life's, gamblers, and even murderers to Burnt Rock. Soon Lee’s friend Marshal Ben Flood is in over his head trying to talk Lee into being more cautious and keeping the rest of the town safe.

When Jonas is killed, Lee wonders whether or not it would be best to just cancel the race. But Ben convinces her that it is too late. With her trust in God leading her on, she hopes to get her horse Slick across the finish line and the gamblers out of town before anything worse happens.

So the story did get better. We had a little more excitement and lots of horses. In fact, the novel seems to center mostly around the horses and the sinister plot that got Jonas killed. There is a hint of romance though.

The characters were a little off to me somehow. I liked the marshal but the others somehow didn’t seem quite right. Lee seemed a little too perfect for me. The only mistake she seems to make is trusting people too much and that seemed odd to me.

I like the fact that is a clean story but it seemed a little long to me, despite having only 136 pages. I would recommend this one if you really like horses a lot or are looking for short, clean Western to read. Otherwise, it might not be that interesting. On the plus side, it was free for the e-reader on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s website the last time I checked.

Contains: some violence