ROMAN:A Novel of the West by Douglas C. Jones

"On the day Roman Hasford's father came home from the war in June of 1865, it was raining.  The new green of the Ozark hardwood timber was like washed lettuce, dripping clear crystals in the slow but steady fall of water from a pale sky that held the sun close above the clouds and was about to break through at any moment.  It was not a bleak day.  It was a pearl-gray day, shining and gentle, with even some of the birds ignoring the weather and making their sparkling calls that seemed, like the leaves, to be washed clean by the rain."  

In two of Douglas C. Jones' earlier novels, Elkhorn Tavern and The Barefoot Brigade, the reader learned Roman Hasford's backstory.

Because his father was a soldier in a Confederate regiment fighting in Virginia and Tennessee, Roman, at age fourteen, began to assume the mantle of man of the house as he attempted to protect his mother and sister and their home from bushwhackers and jayhawkers who ravaged and plundered the area.

If that wasn't enough, large Union and Confederate forces clashed in a major battle, the battle of Pea Ridge, sometimes called the battle of Elkhorn Tavern, that was fought on and around the Hasford farm in the Arkansas Ozarks.

But now the war had ended and Roman's father had returned.  Roman couldn't help resenting the fact that he was no longer in charge and that he had to take orders from his father, while realizing that his father had every right to give those orders.  And anyway, after the danger and excitement of the last few years he didn't look forward to settling down to the peaceful pursuits of an Ozarks hill farmer.

Therefore, at age eighteen, seeking independence from father and with an urge to see and experience the wider world, he left home.  And as many young men did after the war, he headed west.  Well, sort of.  He settled in Leavenworth, Kansas, which was actually much more north than west from his home, but in every other way very much a western frontier town.

Leavenworth

Because he was intelligent and industrious he was able to make important connections in Leavenworth and was soon on his way to becoming a prosperous young businessman.  But not all was peace and tranquility.

Post-Civil war jayhawkers and bushwhackers were also experiencing difficulty in making the transition from war to peace and they continued to plague the border land. And to the west the Cheyenne were fighting a holding action against western encroachment and expansion.

Roman, at age twenty-two, even found himself with a small group of soldiers and scouts surrounded by a large group of Indians in eastern Colorado in what came to be called the battle of Beecher Island.  The irony was not lost on Roman that the Indians were led by a Cheyenne chief known to the whites as Roman Nose.

The battle of Beecher Island

As with Jones' other historical novels there is an intermingling of fact and fiction and an interesting mix of colorful fictional and historical characters.  Since Leavenworth was the site of the major frontier military post, it comes as no surprise that a number of real military officers make cameo appearances, including Winfield Scott Hancock, George Armstrong Custer, George Forsyth, John Pope, and Philip Sheridan.

Furthermore, the battle of Beecher Island is an actual historical event and, yes, the Cheyenne warriors were led by a chief known as Roman Nose.

Published in 1986, Roman received the Western Writers of America's Spur Award for Best Historical Western.  Later editions were published under the title Roman Hasford.


"Few writers can summon forth the agonies and joys of the rites of passage as poignantly as Douglas C. Jones, who in 'Roman' counterbalances that highly personal experience with a broader one of the coming-of-age of the American West .... as always Jones' vision is as singular as a thumbprint. -- Loren D. Estleman 

SEASON OF YELLOW LEAF (1983) and GONE THE DREAMS AND DANCING (1984) by Douglas C. Jones

These novels are companion pieces that are fictional accounts of Cynthia Ann Parker's captivity by Comanches on the Texas frontier. She underwent a cruel initiation and acculturation process but was eventually accepted as a member of the tribe.  She gave birth to a son, Quanah, who grew up to become a warrior respected by his tribe and feared by his enemies.

In Jones' stories Cynthia Ann's Anglo name is changed to Morfydd Parry, which the Comanches change to Chosen, and Quanah becomes Kwahadi (Antelope).

Season of Yellow Leaf begins in 1838 with the kidnapping of ten-year old Morfydd and ends in 1854 with her "re-capture" and return to a white world that she no longer understands and does not want to live in. By the 1850's, the Comanche were facing a bleak future as they fought to oppose Western expansion by whites and encroachment on their land by re-located tribes.

The Comancheria: the land of the Comanches until about 1850

The capture of Cynthia Ann was also the inspiration for Alan LeMay's novel, The Searchers (1954), which was adapted for the screen under the same title.  Many Western aficionados rank it as the greatest western ever filmed.  It was directed by John Ford and starred John Wayne and the spectacular Monument Valley vistas.

Palo Duro (Spanish for 'hard stick') Canyon located a few miles south of modern-day Amarillo, Texas is the second largest canyon in the U.S.  It served as a winter refuge by the Comanches.  The canyon teemed with game, including buffalo, until wiped out by hide hunters.

Gone the Dreams and Dancing takes place after 1870 and is narrated by Liverpool Morgan, the Black Welshman we first met in The Barefoot Brigade (1982).  He is now serving as a civilian interpreter for the military at Fort Sill in the Indian Territory.

In 1875, Morgan first sets eyes on Kwahadi, the last war chief of his Comanche band, defeated but proud, leading his people to the Reservation. Eventually, Morgan becomes Kwahadi's friend and attempts to help the chief with the difficult task of helping his people adapt to a new way of life.

The Western Writers of America awarded Gone the Dreams and Dancing a Spur Award for Best Historical Novel.


"In these works, Jones displays the sensitivity and artistry for which he has become renowned.  His appreciation for the culture and tradition of the Comanches is apparent, and he does not diminish his subjects by romanticizing them.  His balanced treatment of whites reflects that they too are caught in processes of change that they cannot control.  Jones' characters are complex and memorable. His descriptions of western landscape reflects his artist's eye for color and form, and his careful research recreates settings that disappeared long ago.  His novels are important contributions to Western literature." -- Cheryl J. Foote, Twentieth-Century Western Writers

Cynthia Ann Parker and infant daughter soon after her "re-capture"

Quanah Parker

A CREEK CALLED WOUNDED KNEE (1978) by Douglas C. Jones

On December 29, 1890 Custer's old command, the Seventh Cavalry, attempted to disarm a band of 120 Minneconjou Sioux warriors led by Chief Big Foot that had surrendered the day before.  

When one warrior resisted surrendering his rifle and a trooper attempted to wrest it from him, either the rifle or some other weapon fired, and the soldiers began to fire indiscriminately into the group of Sioux, who then began to retrieve their stacked weapons and to fire back.  Since most of them had no weapons they began to flee in an effort to avoid annihilation.  

The Seventh had mounted four Hotchkiss cannons on a nearby knoll and the soldiers manning the guns began to fire into the Sioux encampment located some distance from where the meeting between the Seventh and Big Foot's men had taken place.  It is estimated that 230 women and children were in the camp at the time.  As they and a number of the men attempted to make their escape down a dry ravine, the guns were turned on them and the canister shells from the Hotchkiss guns rained deadly shrapnel up and down the ravine.

Soldiers and Hotchkiss guns at Wounded Knee

On that day, 153 known Sioux, including Big Foot, were killed. Over half of the dead were women and children.  Since many of the captured Sioux later died from wounds and others who were wounded but made their escape probably died as well, some estimates place the total dead as high as 300.

Twenty-five solders were killed and thirty-nine were wounded. However, because the two troops that were charged with the responsibility of disarming the Sioux were formed in an L shape in close proximity to the warriors, there is evidence that most of the Seventh's casualties were the result of friendly fire.

Body of Big Foot frozen into a grotesque shape by a winter blizzard

Monument marking mass grave in Wounded Knee cemetery

A Creek Called Wounded Knee (1978) was the third entry in what became a de facto trilogy on the Indian-white conflict on the northern plains.  The first two were The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer (1976) and Arrest Sitting Bull (1977).  Since the massacre at Wounded Knee occurred exactly two weeks after Sitting Bull's death, the third novel represents a natural progression.

The latter two events are closely related not only in terms of time, but also because it was the Ghost Dance movement that was spreading like a prairie grass fire among the Lakota Sioux that aroused fear among settlers, U.S. Indian Agents, and the U.S. cavalry.  Sensationalist reporting by competing newspapers not only added fuel to the fire, but also fanned the flames of hatred and distrust.  Adding further symmetry to the three novels is the fact that it was George Custer's reconstituted Seventh Cavalry regiment that was responsible for the massacre.

As he did in the first two novels, Jones utilizes both historical and fictional characters to tell the story, but within the plot he makes the story as factual as possible.  I always knew that he was a thorough researcher, but I discovered in rereading this novel that he was even more meticulous than I first imagined.  

I won't give them away, but there are two incidents in the story that just did not ring true for me.  I thought they were cases of a novelist doing what a novelist is supposed to do, in fact is obligated to do.  I assumed he had manufactured a couple of fictional events in order to spice up the story. However, in doing a little further research I discovered that both were documented events.  I also ran across other examples of a similar nature.

For some readers, this story will at first move slowly, but as a reviewer wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch "[t]he ominous presence of the coming tragedy is on every page."

In the beginning, Jones sets the stage by vividly detailing the fear and distrust that pervaded Big Foot's band as well as the nervous anxiety of the relatively inexperienced raw recruits who comprised a majority of the reconstituted Seventh Calvary, a regiment that had earlier sustained a stunning defeat at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne on the Little Bighorn.  Fourteen years later, near a creek in South Dakota, the Seventh and the Sioux clashed again in what was initially called the battle of Wounded Knee, but today is almost universally known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.






  

ARREST SITTING BULL (1977) by Douglas C. Jones

"Jones displays sympathy for whites and Indians but never slips into a maudlin sentimentality.  The villains of his novels are not the people caught up in the event but a government that repeatedly dealt with Indian-White conflict ineptly and insensitively." 

-- Cheryl J. Foote, Twentieth-Century Western Writers

Douglas C. Jones’ first novel was THE COURT-MARTIAL OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER (1976); a “what-if” story that asked (and answered) the question of what Custer’s fate would have been had he survived the battle of Little Bighorn.  His second novel, The Arrest of Sitting Bull (1977), was also a fictional account of a controversial chapter in the history of Indian-white relations.  This time it is the events surrounding the death of Sitting Bull on December 15, 1890. 

At the time, the Lakota Sioux chief was living on the Standing Rock Reservation on the borders between the recently created states of North and South Dakota. The authorities had become deeply concerned about the Ghost Dance movement that had spread among the Lakota.  The movement, sharing many of the characteristics of a religion, promised the eminent arrival of an Indian Messiah who would bring back the buffalo and free the Indians from their white oppressors.

The U.S. Indian Agent at the reservation, James McLaughlin, who believed that Sitting Bull was one of the moving forces behind the movement, sent a group of Indian policemen, thirty-nine in all, to Sitting Bull's cabin to arrest him. The botched effort by the policemen ended in tragedy.

Ten days later the Wounded Knee massacre occurred on the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.  That tragedy was the subject of Jones’ third novel, A Creek Called Wounded Knee (1978). 

As in his first novel, and as he would do in subsequent novels, Jones intertwines historical and fictional characters, intermingles fact and fiction, and uses the eye of a painter (which he was), the ear of a journalist (degrees in journalism and mass communications), and the research skills of a historian to bring history alive in a way that no historian could.

THE COURT-MARTIAL OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER (1976) by Douglas C. Jones

DOUGLAS C. JONES (1924-1998).

I find it difficult to understand why some western novelists are so fortunate to have many of their books and stories make their way to movie and TV screens, while other writers often just as talented, or maybe even more so, rarely, if ever, see their work adapted to film.

There is no doubt that timing is a factor. Writers such as Zane Grey, Ernest Haycox, and Luke Short, for example, were turning out novels at a time when western movies were extremely popular and were annually produced by the hundreds.  In the case of Grey all of his western novels were filmed, most of them more than once, though in some cases only the title of the story survived the screenplay.

On the other hand, the stories of a few other writers -- Louis L'Amour and Larry McMurty come to mind -- have made their way to the screen even at a time that fewer and fewer westerns were being filmed.  True, most of the L'Amour stories were filmed as made-for-TV movies, but they were filmed.

Then there is the late Elmer Kelton, who was a prolific writer of popular western novels, some of which were acclaimed by critics and won prestigious awards. And yet only one of them, The Good Old Boys, was ever filmed, and that as a TV movie with Tommy Lee Jones as producer and star.

And that brings us to Douglas C. Jones.  

First of all, it would be a misnomer to call him a "western novelist."  While it is true that most of his novels were set in the West, they were far from the formulaic stories produced by the likes of L'Amour, Haycox, Short, and company, or even Kelton. While Kelton did write a few novels that approached literary status, most of them would have to be classified as formulaic, which is not to say that they weren't well-written and enjoyable. Jones' novels, on the other hand, were anything but formulaic. They weren't really "western novels" as we think of the term, but were in reality historical novels that happened to be set in the West.

But like Kelton, only one of Jones' stories has been adapted to film and is likewise a TV movie. Jones' very first novel, The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer, was produced as a Hallmark TV movie in 1977, and is thus far the first and last Jones story to be filmed.  

He was born in 1924 in the small northwestern Arkansas town of Winslow, located about half-way between the larger towns of Fort Smith and Fayetteville. After graduating from high school in Fayetteville in 1942, he was drafted into the army and served in the Pacific Theater.

After his discharge, he attended the University of Arkansas, graduating with a degree in journalism in 1949.  He then returned to the army where he served another twenty years.  But during that time he attended the University of Wisconsin where he was awarded a master's degree in mass communications.

Having grown up in northwestern Arkansas just across the Arkansas River from the former Indian Territory, it is only natural that Jones developed a deep and abiding interest in the history of the Indian frontier.  That interest led him to deal with the conflict between Indians and whites in his first book, a work of nonfiction, as well as his first three novels which followed.  And it was a subject that he would also return to in his later work.

While still in the military, his first book, The Treaty of Medicine Lodge, was published in 1966.  His only nonfiction book, it was a re-working of his master's thesis.  That might seem a strange thesis for a degree in mass communications until you read the book's subtitle: The Story of the Great Treaty Council as Told by Eyewitnesses.  The eyewitnesses were the newspaper correspondents such as Henry Stanley who were sent to cover the proceedings.

The above marker which sets in the town of Medicine Lodge, Kansas is somewhat of an over simplification of the treaty's impact, but it is correct in stating that it did not bring immediate peace.  There were several causes, but the chief one was the fact that Congress failed to follow through with its side of the agreement.

Retiring as a Lt. Colonel in 1968, he taught journalism for six years at Wisconsin, eventually devoting full-time to his writing. Fifty-two years old when his first novel was published, he would write sixteen more, with the last being published posthumously. His historical novels range all the way from the American Revolution to the Great Depression.  There is also an eighteenth novel, set in World War II, that has as of yet not been published.  It would seem a natural fit for a career soldier who served in that conflict, but with the passing of almost two decades since his death, it doesn't seem likely that it will ever see the light of day.


THE BOOK.

According to Jones, the premise of his first novel was born as a result of a discussion with a friend about what Custer's fate might have been had he survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn.  

It was Jones' opinion that Custer would have faced court-martial charges related to his leadership and conduct during the battle.

In the alternate history that resulted (the only foray that Jones made into that genre), charges are brought against Custer and witnesses are called to testify for and against him.  The witnesses present conflicting views of the man and confusing testimony about the events surrounding the battle that in many ways reflect the confusion that still surrounds the man and his actions to this day.  It is through the testimony of the eyewitnesses that the battle is recreated.

View from "Last Stand Hill" with Little Bighorn valley in the distance marked by trees along the bank of the river.  It was in the valley that the large villages of the Lakota (Sioux) and Northern Cheyenne were hidden.

The verdict?  I'm not at liberty to say on the grounds that I would be guilty of spoiling a good story.  But I do recommend it to anyone who is interested in the intriguing possibilities that the book offers.  I should also mention that it won the Western Writers of America's spur award for Best Western Novel.


"This is a fantasy which needs no apology, for who among us has not been intrigued by the alternatives history never reveals." -- Douglas C. Jones, writing in the preface of The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer


Enhancing the pleasure of reading the book are the pencil and charcoal sketches of the principal characters that are included in my first edition copy. The artist is the author.  I forgot to mention that he was also a talented artist. And as a painter, he was able to describe and bring to life landscapes in a vivid fashion in his novels.  His sketches also appear in the first editions of several of his other books.

One critic wrote that Jones' abilities as a writer, journalist, historian, and painter represented "a happy amalgamation of talents."  And so they did.  Oh, I also forgot to mention that he played the upright bass in a jazz band.  I guess that was in his spare time.

******
"Countless movies and books have ... featured Custer.  Sometimes Custer is a hero; recently, more often, he's a villain, but never boring .... Both admirers and critics of Custer will find something in the book to support their points of view. -- William F.B. Vearey, The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable 


"This superb novel answers the question that everyone has asked: What would have happened to Custer had he lived?  Read it." -- Jessamyn West


The Film (Warner Bros. TV, 1977)  (NBC-TV).
DIRECTOR: Glenn Jordan; PRODUCER: Norman Rosemont; WRITERS: teleplay by John Gay based on novel by Douglas C. Jones; CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jim Kilgore

CAST: Brian Keith, James Olson, Blythe Danner, Ken Howard, Stephen Elliott, Dehl Berti, James Blendick, J.D. Cannon, Nicolas Coster, William Daniels, Richard Dysart, Anthony Zerbe

QUICK HITS

The following are some quick looks at a few books set in the American West  that I think deserve a 5 out of 5 rating:

THE COURT MARTIAL OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER, Douglas C. Jones (originally published in 1976)

 

Douglas C. Jones has long been one of my favorite writers.  This was the first of many fine novels to be written by the native Arkansan and retired military officer.  In 1976, it was the winner of the Western Writers of America's prestigious Spur Award for best Western novel.

Publisher's blurb: Suppose that George Armstrong Custer did not die at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Suppose that, instead, he was found close to death at the scene of the defeat and was brought to trial for his actions. With a masterful blend of fact and fiction, The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer tells us what might have happened at that trial as it brings to life the most exciting period in the history of the American West.


SEASON OF YELLOW LEAF, Douglas C. Jones (originally published in 1983)

 

Based on the life of Cynthia Ann Parker, this is the story of ten-year-old Chosen who was taken captive by the Comanches and whose son Quanah later became the last war chief of that tribe.


GONE THE DREAMS AND DANCING, Douglas C. Jones  (originally published in 1984)

Quanah Parker

This is a sequel to Season of Yellow Leaf.  Based on the life of Quanah Parker, it is a fictional account of his efforts to save his people.  In 1984, it was the recipient of the Western Writers of America's Spur Award for best Western historical novel. 


FOOL'S CROW, James Welch (originally published in 1986) 

 

Dee Brown says this about James Welch's Fool's Crow: "Remarkable for its beauty of language...May be the closest we will ever come in literature to an understanding of what life was like for a western Indian." That is high praise indeed and even more meaningful since it comes from the author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and who is also one of the most respected of all historians of the American West.


THE LAST CROSSING, Guy Vanderhaeghe (originally published in 2002)

 

The Last Crossing is a big, sprawling epic Western novel. Some critics have compared it to the Western novels of Cormac McCarthy. I can't agree. It is true that it does share some similarities with McCarthy's novels, but it isn't nearly as dark.

I think a better comparison would be Larry McMurtry. Both writers have a better sense of humor than McCarthy (who seems to have none at all), and their writing, though often characterized by scenes of graphic violence, also have moments of humor which help lighten the mood.

The Last Crossing is as almost good as McMurtry's best and far superior to his worst. 





 

THE SON: A Novel by Phillipp Meyer

Phillipp Meyer’s The Son, a sprawling multigenerational epic set in Texas (which is always a good place to locate epics, especially the sprawling variety), begins with the family patriarch, Col. Eli McCullough. 


COL. ELI MCCULLOUGH
“Most will be familiar with the date of my birth. The Declaration of Independence that bore the Republic of Texas out of Mexican tyranny was ratified March 2, 1836, in a humble shack at the edge of the Brazos. Half the signatories were malarial; the other half had come to Texas to escape a hangman’s noose. I was the first male child of this new republic.”

He grows up to become one tough hombre. He has not only seen it all, he has lived it. In his lifetime, he was a Comanche captive, Texas Ranger, Confederate colonel, cattle baron, and oil tycoon. Obviously, it had to be a long life -- and it was – one hundred years.  How a young helpless boy at the mercy of his Comanche captors eventually became a wealthy tyrant wielding almost absolute power is at the heart of the novel.

PETER MCCULLOUGH
“My birthday. Today, without the help of any whiskey, I have reached the conclusion: I am no one. Looking back over my forty-five years I see nothing worthwhile – what I had mistaken for a soul appears more like a black abyss – I have allowed others to shape me as they pleased. To ask the Colonel I am the worst son he has ever had….”

Ron Charles perfectly characterizes Peter in his review in the Washington Post as "a prairie Hamlet among the Texas Medicis." There is no way that the son can possibly surpass the father when it comes to achievements, or does he even want to. Instead, he is the novel's conscience and its critic. He deplores his father's status as a giant in the land, but most of all he hates how his father has achieved his status and the harsh measures he resorts to in order to maintain it. There is no reward for such views. In fact, most people see him as a weak man -- and that includes his father.

JEANNE ANNE MCCULLOUGH
“If she were a better person she would not leave her family a dime; a few million, maybe, something to pay for college or if they got sick. She had grown up knowing that if a drought went on another year, or the ticks got worse, or the flies, if any single thing went wrong, the family would not eat. Of course, they had oil by then; it was an illusion. But her father had acted as if it was true, and she had believed it, and so it was.

“…even as a child she’d been mostly alone. Her family had owned the town. People made no sense to her. Men, with whom she had everything in common, did not want her around. Women, with whom she had nothing in common, smiled too much, laughed too loud, and mostly reminded her of small dogs, their lives lost in interior decorating and other peoples’ outfits. There had never been a place for a person like her.”

If the Colonel had a soul mate, it was his great-granddaughter, Jeanne Anne. He had no respect and little love for his son, Peter, or his grandson, Charles, who was Jeanne Anne’s father. However, he doted on Jeanne Anne and she, who never knew her grandfather and also had little respect for her father, returned her great-grandfather’s affection.

As far as the Colonel was concerned, Peter was too soft and idealistic and in his own way, so was Charles, who was too tied to cattle and the land. The Colonel understood that down through the ages through war and conquest the land had been won and lost many times and he believed that it was subject to occurring again, that historical progress was a matter of destroying what had come before. Therefore, one should extract what one could from the land while one could. Charles wanted only to be a cattleman, but cattle ranching was a losing proposition. The Colonel’s solution – and Jeanne Anne’s – was to drill, drill for oil.

Spindletop, January 10, 1901; Texas' first big one

Comanche warriors, 1892

Despite his capture as a boy by the Comanches and their initial cruel treatment of him, the colonel learned not only to respect them, but also to view them as family.  They were practically the only people that he held in esteem. 

Certainly not the Texas Rangers, with whom he was forced to serve.
  
“Rangering was not a career so much as a way to die young and get paid nothing for doing it; your chances of surviving a year with a company were about the same as not.  The lucky ones ending up in an unmarked hole.  The rest lost their topknot. By then the days of the ace units … were over.  What was left was an assortment of bankrupt soldiers and adventure seekers, convicts and God’s abandons.”

Early Rangers

He viewed the poor  Mexicans of the area as people whose labor was to be exploited.  But he also believed that the prosperous Mexicans who owned land were to be exploited as well.  He believed that their time had passed and he viewed their property as fair game for the taking -- and he took.  

His opinion of most of the whites in the area wasn't much higher either, with one exception. He had good things to say about the German settlers living around the town of Fredericksburg:

"Before the Germans came, it was thought impossible to make butter in a southern climate.  It was also thought impossible to grow wheat.  A slave economy does that to the human mind, but the Germans, who had not been told otherwise, arrived and began churning first-rate butter and raising heavy crops of the noble cereal, which they sold to their dumbfounded neighbors at a high profit.

“Your German had no allergy to work, which was conspicuous when you looked at his possessions.  If, upon passing some field, you noticed the soil was level and the rows straight, the land belonged to a German.  If the field was full of rocks, if the rows appeared to have been laid by a blind Indian, if it was December and the cotton had not been picked, you knew the land was owned by one of the local whites, who had drifted over from Tennessee and hoped that the bounties of Dame Nature would, by some witchery, yield him up a slave.”

THE AUTHOR
Phillipp Meyer is one of those overnight successes whose success was not overnight.  His first published novel was the critically acclaimed American Rust, but it was his third novel.  The first he didn't attempt to sell and the second he couldn't sell.

Now, The Son has garnered even more praise than his debut, even to the extent of being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  What comes next?  In an interview, he said that he planned his next book to be combined with his first two in what he called "an American trilogy."  He gave no clues regarding the subject matter of the third book.

 

******
REVIEWS:

"The greatest things about The Son are its scope and ambition, not its strictly literary mettle. It’s an enveloping, extremely well-wrought, popular novel with passionate convictions about the people, places and battles that it conjures. That ought to be enough." -- Janet Maslin, New York Times 


"I could no more convey the scope of The Son than I could capture the boundless plains of Texas. With this family that stretches from our war with Mexico to our invasion of Iraq, Meyer has given us an extraordinary orchestration of American history, a testament to the fact that all victors erect their empires on bones bleached by the light of self-righteousness." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

"These are not heroic transplants from the present, disguised in buckskin and loincloths.  They are unrepentant, greedy, often homicidal, lost souls, blindly groping their way through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." -- Will Blythe, New York Times Book Review


"Meyer's tale is vast, volcanic, prodigious in violence, intermittently hard to fathom, not infrequently hard to stomach, and difficult to ignore." -- Boston Globe

"The Son drives home one hard and fascinating truth about American life: None of us belong here.  We just have it on loan until the next civilization comes around." -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"It may not be the Great American Novel, but it certainly is a damn good one." -- Entertainment Weekly

Now for an irritating fly in the soothing ointment of praise:

"On one level, this large-canvas family saga by award-winning novelist Philipp Meyer resembles nothing more than a patchwork of derivative fiction — sort of Edna Ferber meets Thomas Berger meets James Michener, with a dash of Dallas and a touch of The Big Valley thrown in for flavor.

"It’s also a none-too-subtle bashing of Texas history, myths and legends, with a derisive editorial condemnation of all things Texan or Western." -- Clay Reynolds, Dallas Morning News
  
I must add that other reviews that I read in other Texas publications were positive.  In fact, the above is the only negative review that I found anywhere.