Written by Rich Rogers
JERICHO’S ROAD by Elmer Kelton
2004, Forge Books, Mass Market Paperback, 298 pages.
Moving to Italy has changed my mind about country music. It reminds me of home. It’s a genre of music that doesn’t cross the pond in a lot of ways. Its themes are purely American, although there are a few Italians over here trying their hand at country music, and Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and John Denver are very famous here. However, since I became a voracious reader, I’ve liked Western novels. Though the Western is a purely American novel, Western movies are popular over here, which means that a lot of Italians have seen more of Utah than they know—mainly, Monument Valley.
As a film genre, the Western is dead—or on life support, with someone’s hand on the plug. Back in 1985, Lawrence Kasdan’s “Silverado” and Clint Eastwood’s “Pale Rider” looked set to revive the genre, but no one really followed them up. Then, in 1992, Eastwood put the final nail in the coffin of the Western movie with “Unforgiven.” Kasdan paid loving homage to Western movies and television series, but “Unforgiven” tore them apart at the seams.
These days, the question is, “Is the same thing happening to the Western novel?” Bookstores seem to be cutting the space they devote to the genre, mainly populating it with guaranteed sellers, like Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Ralph Compton, and Elmer Kelton. According to Sherry Monahan, president of the Western Writers Association, many new writers in the field are being filed among the general titles. And the genre may be expanding. Monahan herself specializes in nonfiction writing about the American West, focusing on food and drink and day-to-day life of the time.
But I digress; all of this is foreshadowing for another piece. Stay tuned.
A couple months back, I was browsing in Florence’s only English bookstore—The Paperback Exchange. Yes, there is only one here. Believe it or not, for all of its fame, Florence is a fairly small city. Florence proper has a population roughly equivalent to that of Salt Lake City proper—only about 350,000, give or take a couple thousand—so there is only one English bookstore. As I was browsing the used book section, I found a selection of Westerns. Nothing from Louis L’Amour (I have his complete library back in the States in my storage unit), but there were several titles from Elmer Kelton, who is every bit as good a writer of Westerns as L’Amour—and in many ways better.
I grabbed “Jericho’s Road” and took it home. Reading it took me home, as it were.
The story focuses on a young Texas Ranger, Andy Pickard, who’s been assigned to the Rio Grande in an area where two cattle barons are facing off against each other. On the U.S. side is Jackson Jericho, and on the Mexican side is Guadalupe Chavez, both with power and money and the ruthless will to use both. They spend their time raiding each other’s herds, and things rush to a showdown.
The only thing stopping a total bloodbath is the Texas Rangers. This is Kelton’s sixth of nine titles in his Texas Rangers series.
Texas is still feeling the effects of the war, which separated it from Mexico, as well as the Land Grant Wars, a series of skirmishes between the Mexicans who remained in the parts that became the United States (mainly in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona) and the arriving Anglos who figured the land was theirs for the taking. Much of the land had been in the hands of the Mexican families for generations. It was a tense and bloody time.
It’s in stories like this that Kelton’s skill shines through.
As he tells the story, he gives the reader a history lesson, showing the day-to-day lives of the people involved—be it reporting to headquarters or how the Rangers operated in camp and on the line—and other small historical details. L’Amour, for all of his talent, rarely dives into such things. The result is a historically deeper, more satisfying read. The power of this story rests on the historical events and their effects on the people of the time. Racism ran deep on both sides of the Rio Grande, and in many cases with good reason on the part of each. Anglo Texans mistrusted Mexicans because of thefts, rustling, and such, and Mexican mistrusted the Anglos due to their belligerent attitudes and assumptions that anything was now free for the taking, no matter how long the residents of the land had lived there before the change.
The characters are deep and real.
But don’t let all that fool you. Kelton packs plenty of the stuff you expect from Westerns as well: gun battles, riding across the range, horses, and a simple life based on respect, responsibility, and perseverance. Kelton also delivers a lot of humor mixed in with the history and guns.
If you haven’t discovered Elmer Kelton, but love Westerns, this man is for you, and you should really enjoy “Jericho’s Road.”
Rich welcomes questions and comments from readers. You can contact him at [email protected].
