Ranger’s Trail by Elmer Kelton
2003; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wal.2003.0036
ISSN1948-7142
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and Natural History
ResumoB o o k R e v ie w s 1 0 5 Ranger’s Trail. By Elmer Kelton. New York: Forge, 2002. 287 pages, $23.95. Lewis Toland New M exico Military Institute, Roswell Crossing borders has fascinated western writers fromJames Fenimore Cooper to Larry McMurtry because doing so is essential to a journey motif. A border demarcates change and thereby invites ironies and ambiguities. Although Elmer Kelton’s most memorable novels, especially The Time It Never Rained and The Good Old Boys, are set in the twentieth century without clear borders, the market favors novels set along the traditional Texas frontier, where cultures collide. Having long abandoned the fonnulaic “shoot ’em ups,” Kelton faces a formidable task in saying something significant without repeating tired clichés. Although scorched by UT-Austin professor Don Graham’s “Slouching into the Sunset” castigation of Stand Proud (a gritty, austere tale of Charles Goodnight), Kelton adds the fourth novel in a series of five about a slightly less irascible fron tiersman and member of the Texas Rangers. Aware of the sometimes savagely decisive conduct of the early Texas Rangers, Kelton traces their origin as a barrier against Comanches during the Civil War. Protagonist Rusty Shannon, once a waif rescued during the Linnville Raid of 1840, has grown into a hardened survivor of Indian skirmishes and of a deadly quanel with the carpetbaggers who stole his farm. Ready to cross a metaphorical border from single to married life, he loses his fiancée to a murder due to mistaken identity, which drives the enraged former Ranger onto the trail of the Bascoms, frontier detritus. Filled with sufficient violence to satisfy casual readers, the novel subtly suggests the thematic consequences of border life. Informal adoption functions as a boundary between lonely, alienated indi viduals and family members. Rusty mentors Andy Pickard, another youngster stolen from his White family but later recovered from the Comanche band who adopted him. An unavoidable killing forever bans Andy from returning to the wandering life, yet he never quite fits into any White community. Ironically, he feels more at home with the Rangers, who relentlessly pursue and attack Red or White threats along the receding frontier. Finding homes eludes the isolates in this novel. Rusty loses his presumed home with Josie Monahan, murdered by Lacey Bascom, who shot at a feminine silhouette, thinking her to be his sister-in-law, Alice Monahan Bascom. Bessie Bascom, Alice’s harridan mother-in-law, will not rest until she kills Alice, who fled an unhappy marriage to Corey Bascom when Rusty came to check on her. Later discovering that his wife lives, Corey tries to kidnap her to start a new life far away, but this home can never happen because Bessie trails Alice to Rusty’s cabin, where a shootout eliminates Bessie and Corey. The novel closes without prospects of stable homes for Rusty, Andy, or Alice. The Texas novelist reminds us that the frontier was an unstable, ambiguous border laced with the irony of orphans who break the trails for families to follow. ...
Referência(s)