The West Texas cattle frontier in fact, done as fiction
Written: May 20 '03 (Updated Feb 21 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast paced, well written. An interesting story. Historically accurate.
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: An excellent novel with interesting characters. And a good way to learn something about the post war history of West Texas.
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| szz's Full Review: Benjamin Capps - Sam Chance |
Sam Chance is a novel about the Texas cattle frontier. It is historically accurate as it traces the gradual change of that frontier from a Spanish/Mexican model of free ranging, semi-domesticated stock of half-wild Spanish ancestry exploited but hardly managed by man, to a fenced and carefully managed stock of fully domesticated cattle with strong English bloodlines managed according to English/Scottish models of hands-on care.
This is a novel about a man, Sam Chance, an American Civil War veteran of the defeated Southern army, who migrates to Texas after the war to make a future for himself. It is historically accurate in that the challenges faced by the protagonist are those faced by the historical individuals who actually did "tame" West Texas.
Sam Chance is a man of action. He thinks clearly and then acts with few regrets. Our view into his soul is provided by watching him act in the face of multiple challenges. Challenges including Indians, bandits, a harsh land with little material for building shelters, the economic cycles in post-Civil War America that made the market for cattle subject to sudden collapse, and the weather, both summer droughts and winter storms. So battles with the Comanche play a part in the story as do legal problems of proving land rights based on the purchase of much traded Texas State land rights granted to Texas veterans of the Civil War. In time the book spans the years 1865 to 1922, a period of vast changes in America, but relatively few in the make up of Chance who takes on each new challenge as it presents itself.
While Chance is the central character, and an admiral American man of action, we see how certain decisions, inevitable based on his character, are hard on those closest to him. At the end of the book it is left as an exercise for the reader to decide at the end of the novel whether Sam Chance is a hero, or just one of those forceful men who make things happen in the land of opportunity.
Two final points. First, another good book about the American cattle frontier is Badlands by Oakley Hall. That novel covers a shorter period of time in the Montana, but the protagonist faces some of the same challenges faced by Chance in Sam Chance. Both are excellent novels and good ways to learn something about the history of the American West.
Second, the Sam Chance character made me think of John Wayne's characters in two movies: Thomas Dunson in Red River and Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. (Both of these are, like Sam Chance, stories about the Texas cattle frontier.) Like Dunson, his drive to succeed brings pain and something else to those around him. Like Ethan Edwards, he is in fact, a loner "between the winds", driven to succeed but never quite fitting in anywhere, except as a leader of men. Of course a novel has more chance to make these elements of Chance's character more nuanced. Read the book and see if you agree with me.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
szz
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Member: Steven Zoraster
Location: Austin
Reviews written: 23
Trusted by: 2 members
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