BILL WITTLIFF is a distinguished screenwriter and producer whose credits include Lonesome Dove, The Perfect Storm, The Black Stallion, and Legends of the Fall, among others. His fine art photography has been published in the books A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove, La Vida Brinca, and Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy.

JOE CIARDIELLO illustrated Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, and his portraits of authors have appeared in the New York Times Book Review. Among his awards are four silver medals from the Society of Illustrators.

HISTORICAL FICTION

Bill Wittliff, illustrated by Joe Ciardiello

The Devil’s Sinkhole

University of Texas Press

Hardcover, 978-1477309742, 214 pgs., $29.95 (also available as an e-book)

October 4, 2016

Reviewed by François Pointeau

The Devil’s Sinkhole is a real place in Texas, a National Natural Landmark that houses one of the state’s largest colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats. You can visit if you call the Devil’s Sinkhole Society to make reservations. It’s also a very important part of Bill Wittliff’s novel by the same name. I can’t tell you why. You’ll have to read the novel for that. However, like the first novel in the series, The Devil’s Backbone, the story revolves around real landmarks in and around the Texas Hill Country. In a way, it is an imagined travel memoir of life in Central Texas in the late 1800s, and it’s breathtaking.

The Devil’s Sinkhole is not an easy read. The writing is highly stylized. That said, it is worth your time and effort. Let me repeat: It is worth your time and effort.

What Bill Wittliff does with his writing is paint a picture of the world in which his characters live, to the level that I found myself thinking and talking like them. It’s like that moment when you finally think in a foreign language and the light comes on because it’s no longer foreign. The Devil’s Sinkhole buries itself into your unconsciousness and doesn’t let go. It’s beyond just a nostalgic painting of the Texas post–Civil War landscape, it is an honest portrayal of the absolute brutality of that era. You become one of Wittliff’s characters on the search for vengeance and redemption, where survival is just another word for everyday living.

Kill or be killed—that’s one aspect of this story—though that’s not all. This story is multifaceted. Think Mark Twain and Cervantes with a little Diderot thrown in for good measure. They become one, move to Central Texas in the 1800s, work on a pig farm, witness their evil father’s decapitation after surviving their father’s murder of his mother and his mother’s favorite horse, then embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Two figures on horseback—at this point more Cervantes and Diderot than Twain—who banter about life and its meanings, dodging bullets, bandits, and all kinds of mayhem.

The Devil’s Sinkhole is a quixotic tale with Twainish sensibilities told with a Texas twang. It reads like a movie, creating vivid pictures in your mind. It’s a buddy story, an action picture, an adventure romance, and a revenge Spaghetti Western. It’s funny, unnerving, irritating, grandiose, and heartbreaking. You are riding a horse through the mesquite and prickly pears of Central Texas while chewing on a stick, having irreverent philosophical discourse on the state of humanity, and trying to stay alive.

I met Bill Wittliff a couple of years ago, when I interviewed him about the first novel in this series. Not that it should make a difference to how you should enjoy this book or not—but I think you should know that he is a wonderful, charming man. He’s like everybody’s grandfather, and when he’s in your presence, you just want to listen to all his stories. This is how I imagine he wrote this book. It’s your grandfather telling you the stories of his grandfather—that’s my interpretation—and he’s too old to worry about being PC, and his Dad Jokes have become Grandfather Jokes, and, boy, don’t you wish you’ll be that cool and awesome if you’re lucky enough to live as long.

Thank you, Mr. Wittliff, for another great story.

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