Bookworm in the City

No. 14 – A western

Whiskey when we’re dry / John Larison

I love, love, love western stuff: the movies (Giant, The Bravados, The Big Country) and country & western music. I don’t know why, but my best guess is, that I was a rancher in a previous life. On second guess, a rodeo clown would be more fitting. But, that’s a different topic. While the music and movies are easy to get to, the books are a bit more complicated to get one’s hands on here; an online search mostly results in the kind of westerns that have half-naked cowboys on the cover. Interesting for sure, but not what I was looking for. (No worries: titles were safely taken down for future reference.) So, I stuck with browsing the library shelves until I spotted a book with a western symbol on its spine instead. It felt like striking gold (yup, I went there): not easy but worth the effort because wowee what a book it turned out to be!

I’ll try my best not to tell about the book in an “and then…and then…and then…” manner, but forgive me if I slip because a lot happens in this book and I haven’t had a chance to talk about it with anybody yet.
Let’s start with the best thing about this book: main character Jessilyn. She is telling her own story, and she is amazing. As a character she felt authentic and original and she had me at hello.
Jessilyn is raised by her father and brother after her mother didn’t survive her birth. The family place is a small homestead on the outskirts of a town in the south/west of the US. The men take care of the animals and hunt, while Jessilyn takes on the womanly tasks of cleaning, washing, and cooking from the moment she can walk. Her father is addicted to cough syrup which doesn’t make life easier for any of them. Her older brother Noah almost kills their father with a single punch during a fight, and flees home. Jessilyn is left taking care of their permanently injured father and when they realize Noah isn’t coming back, her father starts teaching Jessilyn the additionally useful skills of reading and writing, and shooting, thinking it might increase her chances of a marriage proposal, or in the worst case, increase her chances of survival. When her father dies when she is only seventeen, Jessilyn figures she needs to find her brother, so he can help her running the farm. Her first stop is in town, where she discovers a wanted poster with her brother’s face on it: it turns out that Noah has become a notorious gang leader, and he and the Wild Bunch gang have robbed banks and trains, and there is a big bounty on their heads, dead or alive. The local men are only interested in her because they figure she might lead them to her brother and bring in good money. Not keen on playing that part, Jessilyn quickly leaves town.
Because life for women, let alone women of mixed race like her, is tough in the west, she realizes she needs a disguise and chops off her long hair, binds her chest, exchanges her dress for trousers, and shortens her name to Jesse. She rides out following the Wild Bunch’s trail based on newspaper reports and chooses the paths less travelled to avoid other people as much as possible out of fear to be discovered a poser, but she soon realizes that thanks to her observation skills she can behave like a man enough to pass. If people dare to cast doubt, she bluffs her way through the situation thanks to her big-mouthing skills. Another skill that comes in handy, is her shooting. She earns money with shooting tricks and bets on shoot-outs.
There’s an incident that leaves her killing a man in self-defense. Horrible as that is, Jesse can justify it. Later someone tries to steal her horse, and without hesitation she aims at the disappearing figure, shooting them in the back. This is more difficult to deal with, as she feels she not just killed, but became a killer by shooting like a coward. The fact that this victim turned out to be a girl dressed as a boy, just like herself, doesn’t make it any easier. She wants to burry her victim, but can’t, and leaving the body out in the open to be eaten by animals, creates an open wound on her soul.
With her brother being one of the most wanted men in the west, with bounty hunters on his tail that will only get in her way, Jesse figures the best chance to track him down is to follow the governor’s militia who are chasing him, as they will have the most accurate information on his whereabouts. But she accidentally gets herself into an even better position: she becomes part of the militia after winning a shoot-out against the governor’s best shooter. The job has her trained in battle, and honing her shooting skills with different guns, and it makes her better and faster. She wears the uniform, bunks with one of the other guys, and realizes she is making more money than she ever dreamt possible. She soon finds out that life at the governor’s place isn’t all that it seems though, and she gets frustrated because the job isn’t leading her where she thought it would. Then by complete accident she finds her brother and leaves all securities behind to follow him and his gang to their hide-out. She now is the one being chased, by her old friends in the militia no less, but she’s with family again and that is all that matters to her. It’s a slippery slope though, with the violence of a life lived on the run becoming the norm. Jesse is aware of the ease with which she ends up killing, and knows that she won’t be able to live another life anymore, will never be able to return to the family land and run a farm. Even her most trusted companion, horse Ingrid, doesn’t recognize her anymore: she is a changed woman. It’s a sad realization, and one that makes her even more reckless to a point where both Jesse and you as a reader, know this cannot end well. I don’t think I ever felt so much empathy for a killer.

This story contains everything a western should: chases across the rough lands of the American west. Tough guys, and tougher girls who will do anything to survive. Whiskey, wanted posters, and shoot-outs. The blurring of lines between right and wrong. Heartbreak, vulnerability, and love.
This story sucked me in from the very first page: it had me on a ride-along with Jesse, and I held my breath during the shoot-outs, wondering if this was the moment where things would go awry or not, where things could possibly go next.
I had difficulty letting go of this story to the point where I wasn’t able to start a new book for a while. Although that is not a productive feeling with regards to the to be read-pile, I love it when a book has this effect.