Wayne Dundee writes westerns faster than I can read them. Reckoning
at Rainrock was published earlier this
year, not long after Manhunter’s Mountain, and already there’s another one out, Rio Matanza.
Reckoning is a Lone
McGantry novel, a follow-up to last year’s Dismal River, both set in 1880s Nebraska. It tells a neatly
crafted story with multiple characters who become involved in the fortunes of a
woman convicted of the killing of her father.
Plot. Like a private
eye novel—a form of fiction Dundee also practices—the story kicks off with a
visit by an attractive female with a problem she wants the hero to solve. In
this case, the female is a lawyer, Harriet Munro, and her problem is a missing
client, Roxanne Purdom Bigbee. She’s not exactly missing, but held
captive by what could be called human traffickers. She’s being kept
across the line in Julesburg, Colorado, as a sex-worker in a bucket-of-blood
saloon.
McGantry retrieves her, and because she’s a fugitive from
justice, collects a reward for her capture. The lady lawyer has new evidence,
and her plan is to get a retrial with a new judge. She expects the judge to reverse the guilty
verdict and the sentence of death by hanging handed down at the previous trial.
Turns out there are too many people in town with too much to
lose if that happens. Roxanne gets sprung from jail by an interested party, and
the rest of the novel is a pursuit by posse—and others, including McGantry—into
the Toadstool badlands of the Nebraska panhandle.
Toadstool Geological Park, Nebraska |
Storytelling. For
me, part of the enjoyment of westerns is seeing the way different western
writers go about telling their stories. As a reader, you’re familiar with the
western franchise, but the ways of marshaling its rich material are infinite. Stories set in some previous period of history are also
interesting for what they say about the time when they were written. The past
is made familiar and less remote by recasting it in terms of the present.
Dundee is free to disagree with me about this, but about a
third of the way into this novel, I realized that it reminded me a lot of TV
westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza. Like the continuing characters in those westerns,
Dundee’s people talk a lot. The scene is often of two people in friendly
conversation, and the plot moves forward as they discuss the past, present, and
future.
And the talk is that smoothly even-tempered, lightly
humorous manner of casual conversation that TV writers put into the mouths of
their characters. It’s familiar to the ear, modern-sounding for the way it
fills a social space. You don’t notice that modernisms creep in, as they do
when Dundee’s characters talk. Somehow the word “coldcock” rings true, even
though a slang dictionary says it was not in use in the 1880s.
The values in the novel are also modern ones. Julia Roberts
can sympathetically play a prostitute in a movie today, and an audience is not
puzzled or appalled as it would have been in the Victorian 1880s. Sting can
sing of his own “Roxanne,” and in both cases what we get is romantic and
palatable. So Dundee’s Roxanne glides easily into a modern reader’s
imagination.
McGantry. Dundee’s
central character Lone McGantry is something of a loner, comfortable with being
alone and, like many western heroes, on his own from an early age. All the
same, he is gallant and chivalrous, comfortable in the company of a
respectable, educated woman.
Still, beneath his calm surface, you sense that he harbors a
cauldron of cold rage. His rescue of Roxanne from the saloon is precise and
methodical, and the deaths of those who stand in his way are sudden and brutal.
Stopping at a relay station on a stagecoach line, he takes exception to a
cowboy’s salacious remarks about Roxanne and gets into a fight. Rudely
interrupted by a local rancher during a pleasant meal with lawyer Munro, he
leaps instantly to her defense, ready to draw his gun, though they’re in a
hotel dining room.
He is a fierce protector of women’s honor. When he himself
is sexually stirred by the sleeping Roxanne while camping with her on the
trail, he berates himself for his urges. When she makes clear that she’d
happily give him a roll in the hay, he backs off, shunning anything that might
remotely suggest a romantic entanglement.
Women. Actually, the
women in the novel call most of the shots. Lawyer Munro chooses and hires
McGantry to do a job she has for him, and he remains in her service to the end.
Roxanne is strong and independent, seemingly untouched by abuse during her
childhood and by a career choice as a prostitute in a rough cowboy saloon.
A Mexican woman married to the white foreman of a big ranch
is a regular Lady Macbeth. She has greedy schemes for her own self-advancement
that respect no one. The proprietress of the saloon in Julesburg is a mighty
fortress of a woman, who can only be subdued by being bludgeoned to death. The
rich widow of a dead rancher has a banker around her finger, even while she is
a hopeless alcoholic.
The men, by comparison, tend to knuckle under. They put
themselves on the line and aren’t exactly repaid for their efforts. One is
cuckolded. Two are killed who would have stayed alive had they not got mixed up
with the problematic Roxanne.
Character. Dundee
keeps McGantry as an opaque presence in the story. We know we can count on him
for fearless action. He’s not afraid to kill, and is untouched by killing. But
besides being called a “scout,” we learn little about him. We are almost never
privy to his thoughts or feelings.
The deputy sheriff Turk Ridgeway makes in interesting
contrast. He starts out barely competent as a law officer and plagued by
self-doubt. Lacking the full respect of other townsmen, he struggles gamely
when the sheriff’s duties are suddenly thrust upon him.
Dundee takes us on a long journey with Ridgeway as he leads
a search party out into the wilds of the Nebraska panhandle. Out there, he
takes counsel in the thoughtful advice of a one-armed veteran of the Civil War.
And he grows as a man. Though a journey by horseback across a forlorn, wintry
landscape, it’s also an interior journey. We know what the man is thinking and
feeling all the way.
Maybe because McGantry is already a finished man, and maybe
because Dundee prefers to create an air of mystery about him, we don’t get that
kind of insight. So Ridgeway ends up a more three-dimensional character, and
McGantry is flatter by comparison.
I’m not saying that’s wrong, just different. It may make more plausible the kind of hyper-violence we get in the early chapters when McGantry
subdues the three grotesque characters who keep Roxanne prisoner at the saloon
in Julesburg. It takes a kind of super hero for that sort of death-dealing
action.
Villainy. I’d also
argue that the emotional tone of much of the novel is a reflection of the times
we live in. Especially through the first half of the novel, characters are
often motivated by nothing more than sheer contempt. The trio of characters that keep Roxanne hostage are soulless, inhuman people—in a word, contemptible— and they
deserve the brain-spattering end McGantry provides for them.
The cowboys in the roadhouse, who want sex with Roxanne, are
unapologetic in their contempt for her as a prostitute. The enraged rancher in
the hotel dining room is openly contemptuous of the lady lawyer, an outsider
who’s come to make trouble in his town.
Later in the novel, villains are motivated by more
old-fashioned emotions—greed and fear. And we’re on more familiar ground. But
it’s not a stretch to say that we live today in an age in which contempt is freely
expressed on radio and TV, and simply for people of another political party,
religion, sexual preference, or color. In that regard, Dundee’s novel truly keys into the current zeitgeist.
Wayne D. Dundee |
Wrapping up. That’s
enough, and enough is too much. Let it be said that there’s a whole lot going on in this novel that
makes it fascinating to read. I encourage readers to find Dundee’s westerns, if
they haven’t already. And I have only one caveat—brace yourself for some rough
passages. He doesn’t pull punches.
Reckoning at Rainrock
is currently available at amazon and Barnes&Noble. For a review and
interview with Wayne Dundee about his previous novel Manhunter’s
Mountain, go here. For his blog, go here,
and for his bio at Smashwords go here.
Photo credits:
Toadstool Geological Park, Nebraska, Wikimedia
Commons
Coming up: Saturday
music: Tex Ritter
Ron, like you, I am also fascinated by the way different writers tell their western stories and by extension describe their western heroes. Though they all seem to be doing the same things, they are so different from one another. I'd be interested to read about the literary evolution of the cowboy or the western hero as seen through the eyes of different western writers over more than a century. I have heard much about Mr. Wayne D. Dundee and his work though, I admit, I haven't read any of his novels yet. Time to change that.
ReplyDeleteSounds good. Sure wish I could write faster.
ReplyDeleteNice photos. I have Mr.Dundee on my list to pick up his novels.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the lengthy, detailed review, Ron. Jeez, you may have put more anlaysis into your review than I did in writing the doggone book. I don't necessarily agree with all of your observations, but it's hard to take issue with a piece that concludes by calling my work a "fascinating read" and urges others to seek it out ...
ReplyDeleteI do have to take exception, however, to your interpretation of Roxanne. At one point you say that she appears "seemingly untouched by early childhood abuse and by a career choice as a prostitute". I would argue that everything Roxanne does at this point in her life --- as well as results directly leading up to it --- is a *result* of her childhood abuse. And becoming a prostitute was hardly a "career choice" but rather an act of desperation by a female fugitive trying to survive on the rugged frontier --- survive not only for her own sake but also for the sake of trying to go back and resuce her little sister. Also, when she and McGantry are on the trail together, Roxanne hardly indicates she would "happily give him a roll in the hay". What she says --- at a later point in the story --- is that, given the circumstances and considering her past, she would have *understood* if McGantry had tried something ... Hope that doesn't sound nit-picky, just some things I felt compelled to point out. You write great, thought-provoking reviews, Ron. I'm grateful for your attention to my work,
Thanks for the response, Wayne, and for pointing out the misinterpretation. Shows how you can miss things no matter how close you read.
ReplyDeleteI'm not debating anything you're saying. Except given her history, I expected Roxanne to be more deeply wounded by her past; I think that's all I was trying to say.