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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2023, 320 pages
Paperback:
Sep 24, 2024, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Christine Runyon
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Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post–Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the World.
Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John's beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered.
Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John knows as A. J. Dodd is little more than a rabid animal, slaughtering without reason or remorse, needing to be put down.
Traveling through the unforgiving landscape of a shattered nation in the midst of Reconstruction, John braves winter storms and confronts desperate people in pursuit of his quarry. Untethered, single-minded in purpose, he will not be deterred. Not by the U.S. Marshal who threatens to arrest him for murder should he succeed. And not by Victoria Reavis, the telegraphist aiding him in his death-driven quest, yet hoping he'll choose to embrace a life with her instead.
And as he trails Dodd deep into Texas, John accepts that this final reckoning between them may cost him more than all he's already lost…
Chapter One
Late September 1865 / City Point, Virginia
Ding ding ding.
He found himself lying under white sheets with very little idea of how he had gotten there. It was the morning he woke up. A piercing, repetitive noise broke like thin glass over his consciousness. It was the sound of a dinner bell. He heard rolling carts, the jingle of dishes rattling against one another. His head felt tight, and he didn't know why.
He seemed to have been there for some time.
People nearby were talking. Everything was painted white: the walls, the center posts, a wooden roof overhead. A hot breeze moved down the aisle between rows of beds.
He looked down and saw that his coverings were neat and unbloodied. His hands were laid on top of the sheets as if carefully placed there one by one. The bed was too short for him. They always were. On all the beds were men; most of them were bandaged, some had crutches. The low murmur of conversation went on and on. He saw that he did not have his clothes on, but ...
Another of Jiles' talents is crafting care in only a few pages of storytime. In this journey of vengeance, John crosses paths with transitory characters who often linger in rippling effects. Like a web, everything is connected. Though most of the narrative lives in John's mind, the few third-person point-of-view transitions are seamless. Chenneville hearkens back to westerns long past, Riders of the Purple Sage in particular. But with Jiles' thoughtful care, it truly is one of a kind. Give this masterful novel a shot. It is highly recommended...continued
Full Review
(751 words)
(Reviewed by Christine Runyon).
Revenge is an arduous task, and tales of retribution are especially suited for the western setting. In the popular imagination, the American West is lawless and brutal, besotted with everyday bloodshed, and so revenge seems like an appropriate goal. Nearly every writer of westerns has a vigilante or two somewhere in their lineup. It's a setting so far gone it seems like myth, and that is often how it is written: epic in both landscape and feeling. Paulette Jiles has plenty of experience with revenge westerns, and in her novel Chenneville, she does the genre justice, echoing its romantic roots with an odyssey of body and mind.
They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but the revenge western can be warm in surprising ways, and often ...
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