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Cherokee Dragon and Actor by Robert Conley
Thin Moon and Cold Mist by Kathleen O’Neal Gear
Ranger’s Trail by Elmer Kelton
The Last Ride by Robert E. Howard
From My Cold Dead Fingers by Richard I.Mack
Restitution by Richard S. Wheeler
The Rocky Mountain Company: Cheyenne Winter by Richard S. Wheeler
The Two Faces of Islam, The House of Sa’ud From Tradition to Terror by Stephen Schwartz
Pentagon's New Map by Thomas Barnett
A Matter of Character by Robert Kessler
All reviews © Charles A. Rodenberger
I have read a lot of books lately, including BIAS and SHAKEDOWN which are both in the Library and I won’t review. I want to introduce you to a new author from my home state of Oklahoma. (They wrote a song about me, I am an Okie from Muskogee). Robert Conley is a Cherokee Indian who writes about his Indian heritage from a jillion different viewpoints. You can check out of the Library his book CHEROKEE DRAGON, the story of one of the lesser known chiefs of the Cherokees, who fought the British, French and later American settlers as they encroached on tribal lands in the North Carolina to Georgia area. The book spans from the before the Revolutionary War to the early 1800's telling the trials and tribulations of one of the civilized tribes that adopted European customs, went to New England universities, visited England, knew how to farm, raise orchards, lived in large farm homes, printed their own newspaper in both English and Cherokee. But when gold was discovered on their land in Georgia, they were forced out by greedy white settlers. Conley documents one of the chiefs, who split with the tribe to oppose the encroachment with militant guerilla tactics, that we see being used today throughout the world.
His book, ACTOR, is a different book about a half Cherokee man who as a young teenager, saw his father gunned down by other Cherokees in the Indian Territory. The internal warfare resulted from the decision of some of the Cherokees to take the offer to move to Oklahoma early and the enmity with the ones who held out until Federal troops moved them down the Trail of Tears. The two groups assassinated each other’s leaders for years. There is still intertribal fighting, much like the problems created by out Civil war.
The young protagonist in ACTOR has many names as he acts out various roles in his life. He is sent by his mother to be educated at Dartmouth, where he engages in debates with his profs about Shakespeare. After being beaten for attempting to elope with a white woman, he chooses acting on the stage as a career. Forced to kill a man after his first major stage role, he joins a traveling Shakespearean troup and ends up becoming an avenging gun fighter in the West. The book shows Conley’s erudition, but is a cliff-hanger action western at the same time.
Conley also has several raunchy books about the early western frontier towns, where his protagonist, Barjack, is a lawman who owns the saloon and bawdy house on one side of the street and his wife runs a restaurant on the other side. I haven’t read the first book in the series, BARJACK, but I did read THE GUNFIGHTER, about a gentlemanly, but well-known hired assassin who comes to town to find a place to rest, but everyone thinks he has been hired by their worst enemy to have them killed. The result is a complete restructuring of the townsfolk combined with a chase of the bad guys and enough gunplay to satisfy the most avid western reader.
Three completely different books by an author who can handle a number of subjects well. Look up Conley in your Library and enjoy a variety of education and entertainment.
I have been reading a lot of novels about American Indians, mostly historical novels, but I also enjoy the murder mysteries of Tony Hillerman. A few years back I accidentally discovered another author of murder mysteries set in the four corners area using Indian and white policemen to solve the cases. James Doss has been compared to Hillerman because they both use murder mysteries and Indians in their books, but they are very different in their writing. Doss is not a professor like Hillerman. He is my kind of guy, an engineer, recently retired from Los Alamos, he now lives and writes in Taos and consults for Los Alamos.
He combines his knowledge of the small Ute tribe of Indians with his huge knowledge of nuclear and electrical engineering to weave stories that are intricate in philosophy, but very easy and exciting reading, leaving you the many clues and questions that you would expect in a mystery. Many of his books are titled The Shaman---Sings, -Laughs, -Bones and one I have just finished reading: THE SHAMAN’S GAME. It is interesting that Doss is a Christian and the Utes are also largely Christian, where in Hillerman’s novels the Navajos practice their own religion. Hillerman started writing his novels to encourage the Navajos and Hopis to take pride in the rapidly fading native ceremonies. Each of his novels emphasizes a ceremony. Doss also uses this technique in the Shaman’s Game, using the Sun Dance ceremony as practiced by the Utes at two different locations. Also called dancing thirsty, the dance is a three day affair where the dancers don’t eat or drink with the goal of reaching a mental state of having visions as a result. These can result in healing effects, either for the dancers or observers. Like so much of religion in Mexico and the US, the old Indian beliefs are woven into their Christian understanding.Doss’ books are set in Colorado, but the police activity ranges across Wyoming, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Two main characters are the good-natured seven foot tall Southern Ute Police Department policeman, Charlie Moon and his elderly shaman aunt, Daisy Perika. Between them they solve the mystery of who wants to kill a sun dancer. In the second book I read, THE NIGHT VISITOR, Doss comes up with a fascinating plot of an archeological discovery of a mammoth being excavated by typical competitive archeologists on a ranch where the rancher wants to create a museum and get rich. Another character is a drifter from Arkansas living in a travel trailer with his six year old daughter. His murder and the sale of an artifact from the dig to a rich Arabian make for a compelling story.
Daisy wants Moon to be married to a good Ute woman, but he is pursued by several different women in both books to add a little romance to the stories. In both books Daisy communicates with a pitukufp, who lives in a badger hole and has the characteristics attributed to an Irish Leprechaun.
You can discover many new authors such as Doss at your own Cross Plains Public Library and look up Doss on the Internet which took me several tries to find biographical information.
When you read books written by members of the Western Writers of America, you can count on their historical accuracy. I have just finished reading Thin Moon and Cold Mist by Kathleen O’Neal Gear. This novel is set during the Civil War and Robin Walkingstick Heatherton is a 25 year old woman with Cherokee blood, married to a southern aristocrat, over the objections of his mother. They both serve the Confederate States, he in the service and she as a high level spy. Gear argues in her prologue that over 400 women served as combatants in the armed forces during that war on both sides. Robin infiltrates the Northern forces disguised as a young black man by coloring her skin. In this way she is able to discover plans of battle and forewarn General Lee.
The knowledge of her exploits causes great concern in the Yankee security forces and one Colonel blames her directly for the killing of his brother in battle and plans a personal vendetta against her. When her husband is captured as a spy and summarily executed while she watches from hiding, she takes her six year old son and on instructions from her husband before he died, she flees to the West taking a new identity. Along the way she wins a gold mine in a poker game on a riverboat. She slips away by swimming ashore with her son and makes her way to her claim, with authorities and men she had scammed in hot pursuit.
When Lincoln is assassinated, she is charged as a conspirator and now has the Union Army looking for her. She is saved from her plight by a former Union Major, that her son calls a damned Yankee. This is an adventure filled book with narrow escapes, emotional stresses caused by war experiences and political intrigue almost as good as Clancey’s novels.
Written in 1995, this book inaugurated the Women of the West series, historically accurate tales of women who lived before 1880. Gear has written other books with her husband Michael Gear. They are both trained archeologists and have written some fascinating novels about the prehistoric American Indians. I have read most of them and they all have extensive bibliographies, but are written as the stories of real people so that you don’t know you are getting a history lesson at the same time. Their prehistory book titles all start with The People of the- followed by Wolf, Fire, Earth, River, Sea and Lightning. They also have a new series on the Anasazi Indians of the West. Michael’s books are also excellent historical novels of the early 1800s.
You can find these books and other fascinating Westerns, romances, history and biographies at your Cross Plains Public Library as well as internet service for the public.
Our library has a lot of Elmer Kelton’s books. It seems that men prefer Westerns and women prefer Romances, but both can enjoy Elmer’s latest offering. Ranger’s Trail is the third in a series of books documenting the history of the Texas Rangers. The major character, Rusty Shannon falls in love in this novel. And the way of love is always difficult. Shannon was orphaned when his parents were killed by the Comanches, who took the young red-haired boy to raise. Escaping from the Comanches he later befriends another boy, Andy, rescued from Comanches.
In this book, the two of them visit Austin to assist the newly elected Governor, Coke Stevenson, in taking his office in the capitol from the incumbent Governor Davis, who has asked President Grant to keep him in office by using Federal troops. This is the last reconstruction governor in Texas and there is a lot of bitter feelings. This book is an excellent way to encourage school kids to learn about Texas history with an exciting story. Rusty is asked to join the newly reconstituted Texas Rangers and the book tells of his involvement in chasing the bad guys and renegade Comanches. Much of the story is set in our neck of the woods around Fort Griffin, which adds more local history to the story.
You will enjoy meeting the good guys and bad guys as Rusty and Andy, his Comanche raised sidekick, who often expresses his Comanche point of view, join the Rangers and pursue a family who is out to get rid of them. Tragedy and love abounds. The book ends in a way that indicates that Elmer will have another tale in the Ranger’s saga to keep us reading more history told in an action-filled romantic novel.
I have been living between Cottonwood and Admiral for 18 years and have been visiting Cross Plains since A. C. and Mabel Halsell moved here in 1950, and this year I finally read a book written by Robert E. Howard. Two of them, in fact. I now understand why we get visitors from all over the globe coming to pay homage to our hometown author. He is really good. Why haven’t I read him? Cross Plains citizens have almost totally ignored his writings because the word Conan is always associated with him and the Barbarian is seen as some sort of nemesis. I still haven’t read a Conan book. I did read ALMURIC, a science fiction fantasy where the hero is transported to another planet by time travel and has to cope with a neolithic type culture. It was an excellent book for that type of genre.
But attending the sessions looking at the Texas connection in Robert E. Howard’s writing in June whetted my appetite for reading Howard’s westerns. I have just finished reading THE LAST RIDE, which is a compilation of seven of Howard’s short stories written in 1935 and 1936 just before his death and published in magazines that served the western fiction market. So much has been made of the Barbarian theme that it seemed to turn off people locally, and noone here had ever mentioned his westerns that I remember. Billie Ruth probably did and it went over my head, but I was captivated by the first story titled THE LAST RIDE, but originally published in October 1935 under the title BOOT-HILL PAYOFF in the magazine Western Aces. Recently I reviewed Wheeler’s RESTITUTION for this paper, and I wondered if Wheeler got his plot from Howard. THE LAST RIDE has the hero being the youngest son in a family of robbers whose duty during the robberies was to hold the horses, exactly the same role as the hero in RESTITUTION. Both vowed to make restitution to the people that had been robbed. From there the stories diverge but I hadn’t seen that theme in other westerns. I haven’t read all of them, I admit.
In all of Howard’s stories the hero is a straight shooting, hard fighting, honest cowboy who has been wronged and gets the bad guys in the end. The stories are page turners full of action written so well you can taste the dust, smell the gunsmoke and hear the horse hoofbeats. Complicated twists and turns keep you wondering what will happen next. The language is not offensive. I saw one damn and hell-buzzard being the closest to vile language. There is romance but more like one would find in a 1940 western movie where the cowboy appreciates his women at arm’s length. The hero gets the bank loot returned to town, but only after being chased by a posse trying to hang him, set up by the bad guys who are trying to take over all the ranches in the country. The plot is as complicated as a Hillerman mystery novel and is played out with a lot of action.
THE EXTERMINATION OF YELLOW DONORY is a story worthy of O. Henry. The protagonist tries to commit suicide by calling out the worst gunman in town and becomes a hero when the gunman backs away because he figures there must be trickery to such a challenge.
The Sonora Kid is introduced in KNIFE, BULLET AND NOOSE. The Kid is a favorite Howard character, probably his alter-ego who has to use his six guns against the buffalo hunters and cheating cow dealers while trying to take the large sum of money delivered at the end of a cattle drive ending in Kansas. The story doesn’t describe the drive, but does describe the saloons and squalid conditions of the town at the end of the trail. THE DEVIL’S JOKER is another Sonora Kid story that could have been set in Cross Plains, where the Kid thinks he has killed someone accidently, runs away to keep from being tried and joins an outlaw gang. It could have been set somewhere west of Callahan county. One of the characters says he knew the Kid on the Pecos. Not being an outlaw at heart, he has a problem with his situation, but in the end helps capture the gang and later finds that the man he shot accidently didn’t die and he isn’t wanted for murder.
The other two stories are equally spell binding stories of western adventures with characters including buffalo hunters, gamblers, bank robbers and lawmen. If you like westerns, you will find that Robert E. Howard is as good as if not a lot better that L’Amour and Zane Grey. I am looking forward to reading his full length western novels. Remember the Cross Plains Library houses more Howard books than any where else and even has some for sale.
When Ginny Hoskins read that I was doing book reviews, she insisted I read FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS, written by Richard I. Mack, as far as I know no relation to our bank CEO, Steve Mack. Ginny is hosting Richard as our Meet the Author on July 16 at 7 p.m. at the Community Center. Another service of your Library.
Mack is the sheriff from Arizona that challenged the Brady Bill and got the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional because it required county officials to enforce a federal law to make the background checks on gun purchasers, without any federal funding for the effort. Mack uses the book to make his case against not only the Brady law but his argument against the 20,000 laws that control the ownership of guns, clearly, in his mind, against the constitutional provision of the right to bear arms.
He divides the book into two parts; Vigilantes and Victims, and Fallacies and Facts. He establishes the argument that the media has supported gun control groups that are trying to eliminate gun ownership from our society. He shows that that was the first step Hitler took to take over Germany. He confiscated all guns. He also argues that gun control laws have had no effect at all on the crime rate. The laws against “assault” rifles are given special consideration, showing that criminals don’t prefer them and they have been used in a very few cases, but when they are used, the TV gives them extra coverage.
You will want to read the book whatever side of gun control you are on or if you care about our constitutional rights and you will want to have him sign the book at his talk July 16. From the photo on the book, he is even more handsome than our Steve Mack.
If you want to read a great book about Cottonwood get RESTITUTION by Richard S. Wheeler. It will soon be in the Cross Plains Library after my wife reads it. Wheeler writes about the kind of folks we all know. His story tells how a stage coach robber becomes a solid citizen rancher with a wife and three children, well respected by the community, including the church he joins, until he decides to make restitution to all the folks that were robbed by his gang. Suddenly, the community looks at him through different eyes.
The sheriff decides he needs to pay for his misdeeds by serving jail time and finds a charge to extradite him to another state. His neighbor sees the chance to get his ranch and cattle at a bargain. Suddenly his bank account is frozen, he can’t sell his cattle, and the troubles mount. But there are good folks in town on his side. Even though the church elders want to expel him, his pastor stands up for him.
It was a pleasure to read a book written in 2001 that keeps your interest without the use of profanity, sex or gun play. I couldn’t put the book down until I had finished it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I. One thing more, the setting is Cottonwood, Utah, but the people could have been from Callahan county.
Another Wheeler book I really liked was BUFFALO COMMONS, the story of modern ranchers and their fight against the introduction of wolves by unsavory characters. It is a good read also.
I am fascinated by books written by Richard S. Wheeler. I just finished THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN COMPANY: CHEYENNE WINTER.Set in 1834, the time in the West when the beaver trade was being converted to buffalo hides. Trading companies headquartered in St. Louis had posts located from Montana to Santa Fe. A new company, The Rocky Mountain Company is formed by a Frenchman and his two sons along with two old time mountain men. One son and a mountain man is sent to compete with Bent’s Fort in the south, but this story is about Maxim, the seventeen year old son, sent with Brokenleg Fitzhugh to a post established the year before on the Yellowstone River in competition with the American Fur Trading post. They were competing for buffalo hides with the Cheyennes, Crows, Blackfeet, Asiniboin, Crees, Northern Souix, Hidatsa, Arikara and Gros Ventures. Now these tribes were often at war with each other, but they didn’t fight at the trading posts. They waited until they were a few miles away to steal horses and hides from each other.
The story plays on the rivalry between the fur companies, the Indians and the government officials charged with regulating the trade. Trade goods were shipped up the Missouri to the Yellowstone by boat during the spring mountain runoff and hides were brought back to St. Louis. At one of the inspection ports on the river, the RM Company goods are found to contain 3 casks labeled vinegar and kerosene that really contain grain alcohol, prohibited by the government and controlled by preachers appointed as Indian agents. The story revolves around proving that the spirits weren’t theirs and the spiritual battle raging in Maxim when he decides that trading alcohol for hides is debasing the Indians and he wants no part of it. He tries to abandon ship, but Brokenleg hauls him off the boat to the trading post.
They battle Indian raids that take their trading wagons, untold dangers of weather and rival fur companies plus spending a winter with the Cheyennes. Brokenleg is married to a Cheyenne princess, who wants slaves, but he is against slave trading, so she insists that he follow the Cheyenne tradition and marry her other three sisters, so she can have some help around the house. This makes for interesting times around the compound. Wheeler argues that all of these conditions were present in that time and makes a fascinating story about the trials and tribulations of starting a company against entrenched conglomerates of the old west. It is a spell binding novel that has an interesting ending.
If you only read one book this year, and I suggest you read it immediately, because of our war with Iraq, read The Two Faces of Islam, The House of Sa’ud From Tradition to Terror by Stephen Schwartz. I have read three other books on Islam and this is by far the most complete and best one I have read.
Islam has been hijacked by a group of extremists who have used the enormous oil revenues of Saudi Arabia to create a terrorist operation to kill Muslims who do not agree with them and to use terror to achieve their idea of governing the world so that it all looks like the Taliban operation in Afghanistan. They are behind all of the suicide bombings in Israel as well as the September 11 attack on the United States. Ben Ladin is only one small piece of the picture.
Their branch of Islam is called Wahhabism after a bandit who joined up with the Sauds to create an offshoot of Islam that rejects all early teachings of Muhammad and developed their own interpretation of the Koran to reject music, architecture, any learning other than their teachings, enslave women and teach dying as a martyr as the ultimate goal for men.
Schwartz’s book gives a better history of Islam than any I have read. He developed his interest when he moved to Bosnia for a few years to study the conflict there. Bosnian Muslims have rejected the Wahabbism, but it has spread through the Arab world and is being pushed into Europe and the United States. He documents the history and is up to date as of late 2002.
One quote from the book: “In this way, they sought to introduce extremists activities based in the Middle East into the American heartland. Indeed, the functional center of the system was located in Richardson, Texas, in the form of the Holy Land Foundation”. He explains how they work to complain about injuries allegedly done to Muslims purporting to speak for all Muslims. He names the organizations in Washington and around the country pumping big bucks into their propaganda.
He urges President Bush and the U.S. to help Saudi Arabia change their government to reject the terrorist approach and restore Mecca and the historic sites of Islam to all who claim heritage to Abraham. He states “Saudi dissidents say there are three kinds of Muslims in the kingdom: Those who want to kill everybody (the most extreme Wahhabis); those who wish to kill all non-Wahhabi Muslims but also seek to maintain good relations with the Christian powers (the royals); and the rest, who are traditional Muslims and do not want to kill anybody. The way out of this nightmare can only be found by Muslim believers.”
He proposes a multi religious university in Jerusalem for the study of comparative religions around the world, supporting research in the history of the Abrahamic faiths and preserving archives and structures. A fascinating book that made me support the statements by President Bush when he said that terror backed governments will not be permitted anywhere in the world. Things will definitely change in the year 2003.
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas P. M. Barnett published by G. W. Putnam & Sons, NY 2004.
This book is both a history and a plan for the future of the US. Dr. Barnett’s thesis is that we are the dominant military presence in the world and that future wars will be totally different from the past. He argues that the present world is made up of the haves, have nots and boundary countries in between. Our future operations should be to bring the have nots into the connected world that we enjoy. We should be bringing peace and justice to the entire globe, and that we really have no other choice. We are being forced to go this direction by the terrorist mentality.We are the only country in the world purposely built around the ideal that animates globalization’s advance: freedom of choice, freedom of movement, freedom of expression.
As a people Americans are easily spooked, but no enemy should ever bet against our
boundless capacity for resourcefulness.
While the world’s population has doubled since 1960, the percentage living in poverty has been cut in half.
He uses the term Core for what I would call Haves and Gap for the Have Nots. He supports the war on Iraq as being necessary and makes the following statement:...many governments in the Core still view the world system as a balance of powers, and so any rise in U.S. influence or presence in the Middle East is seen as a loss of their influence or presence there. Too many of these “great powers” are led by small minds who prefer America’s failures to the Core’s expansion, because they see their national interests enhanced by the former and diminished by the latter. They prefer the Gap’s continued suffering to their loss of prestige, and they should be ashamed of their selfishness.
Barnett gives a history of how America handled WWI and WWII, showing that the Marshall Plan resulted in creating peace by bringing Europe and Japan into economic balance with the U.S. He is an optimist about America’s future but his assessment of our present strategy is discussed at length. He does make the following statement:Only time will tell if George Bush is more Harry Truman than Woodrow Wilson. Truman started the ball rolling on a multi-decade grand strategic course that changed human history, whereas Wilson’s attempt at forging a new rule set – namely, the League of Nations — died a quick death, only to rise a quarter-century later from the ashes of World War II.
Barnett argues for a better dialogue between the public and the national leadership on the strategic choices ahead. He says the process gets short-circuited by op-ed columnists and network TV experts who insist on daily scorecards in place of exploring the long term issues. We don’t need to be overwhelmed by the current international events.I grew up fearing nuclear war and fear it no longer. I grew up watching wars unfold between states and see them no longer. I grew up witnessing terrorism by desperate individuals trying to draw attention to their causes and I ignore them no longer. You may see a world coming apart at the seams, a clash of civilizations, or the end of Western civilization, but I see something very different.
I see a world in which wars have become obsolete, where dictators fear for their lives more than democratically elected leaders, and where the world’s greatest armies no longer plan great wars but instead focus on stopping bad individuals from doing bad things. I see a world in which America’s definition of the big threat has downshifted progressively from an “evil empire” to “evil states” to “evil leaders.” I see a world clearly divided between the connected and disconnected, and I see ways to fix that.
This is a book I hope will receive a lot of study, reflection and discussion by all kinds of groups. Normally I give my copy to the Library, but I am keeping this one because I have so many underlined statements in the book and plan to review them. I hope you will get your copy to underline.(These comments are those of the writer only and do not reflect the opinions of the board of the Friends of the Library.) Comments can be sent by E-mail to CAR926@aol.com.
Robert Kessler
A MATTER OF CHARACTER by Robert Kessler
published by Penguin Books, NY, $14. 2005
This is my personal commentary and not that of the Cross Plains Public Library who believes in free speech and has all kinds of books to read.