{"id":761,"date":"2018-12-31T13:51:31","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=761"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:51:31","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:51:31","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=761","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Kirkus, <\/span>freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com, and a moderator at the 20th annual Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, High Country News, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/span>and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

WESTERN HISTORICAL FICTION<\/p>\n

W. W. McNeal<\/span><\/p>\n

Plum Creek: A Novel<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Texas Christian University Press<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-0-8756-5641-2, 320 pgs., $22.95<\/p>\n

October 31, 2016<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/span>PLUM CREEK<\/span> opens with a funeral.<\/span> In the fall of 1869, a week before Billy McCulloch\u2019s sixteenth birthday, his father, Wesley, \u201caccidentally hung himself in a forked branch of a tree\u201d on his way home from a saloon. One of the mourners at his father\u2019s service is the legendary Texas Ranger Colonel Jack Hays, a stranger to Billy. Hays is there to pay his respects to his former colleague and collect on duties owed. A few days later, Billy, his uncles, and a former slave called Gruder set off with Hays to hunt down a renegade \u201chalf-breed\u201d Comanche who has kidnapped Hays\u2019s niece and slaughtered her family.<\/p>\n

Plum Creek<\/span> is retired lawyer and original Texan W. W. McNeal\u2019s<\/span> debut novel. He nods to T. R. Fehrenbach<\/span> and John Graves<\/span> in his acknowledgments, and it shows in the text. Plum Creek is skillful, sometimes lyrical, western fiction, a coming-of-age story with plenty of adventure and Texas history, a little mystery, and lots of soul.<\/p>\n

Peopled with colorful characters\u2014some seeking vengeance, others doing penance, some both (including John Wesley Hardin, portrayed in a cameo)\u2014Billy is especially resonant, reflecting the impatience, frustration, and incomplete understanding of adolescence. \u201cRiding behind the three men who would most influence him, [Billy] believed in the justice of his kin and therefore the justice of their cause.\u201d Billy must face hard truths about his society, including racism and war: \u201cIt was as if his grandfather was stuck in a particular time and space and the world was moving on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other standouts include Gruder, the former slave, who practically raised Billy, and Ashley Maitland, a lawyer with the unhappy job of probating Wesley\u2019s will, and maneuvering through the politics of Reconstruction-era Texas (\u201coccupied territory\u201d), who muses on the \u201cadventure of fools and scoundrels, dreamers and failures . . . the most impractical and improbable undertakings\u201d that is Texas.<\/p>\n

Plum Creek<\/span> possesses a wry sense of humor. Billy\u2019s grandfather is a Primitive Baptist preacher, a denomination which doesn\u2019t allow instruments in church, but Billy\u2019s grandmother has a piano at home. \u201cIf the Lord only wanted to hear voices in church,\u201d Billy wonders, \u201cwhy would he want to hear the piano in the parlor?\u201d<\/p>\n

McNeal\u2019s imagery is vivid. A flooding river is \u201ca roiling chocolate,\u201d and the \u201cwind and rain hitting the cottonwood trees sounded like the whispers of old women.\u201d Texans will enjoy the detailed geography, which helps visualize the odyssey, as Hays\u2019s posse roams Comancher\u00eda around Bandera and the Medina River.<\/p>\n

Evenly paced and intricately plotted, Plum Creek<\/span> has multiple subplots. The hunt is interwoven with happenings back home, and therein lies my sole quibble with this novel. These subplots include romance, business, and politics. While each casts considerable light on some of the more minor characters, they interrupt the narrative flow of Billy\u2019s adventure. On the other hand, these seemingly tangential threads are drawn together in the climax as the characters converge in San Antonio.<\/p>\n

McNeal is a gifted novelist. He should write another.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Kirkus, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com, and a moderator at the 20th annual Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, High Country News, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}