AUTHOR FAVOURITES: WHILE ANGELS DANCE by RALPH COTTON

RALPH COTTON is not only one of the most prolific western writers, he’s also one of the most successful.

Ralph has written over seventy novels, including THE RANGER SERIES featuring Ranger SAM BURRACK and its spin off THE GUNMAN’S REPUTATION series, also the WEBB’S POSSE series and spin-offs. He’s also continued the DANNY DUGGIN series (about a woman gunfighter disguised as a man), writing as RALPH COMPTON. As well as westerns he’s written contemporary thrillers. And he still finds time to paint, sail, write songs and play guitar! 

Like many authors, Ralph tells me he’s particularly fond of his debut WHILE ANGELS DANCE. The book follows the career of probably the most famous American outlaw band – the JAMES/ YOUNGER gang. The books fictional hero, Jeston Nash, is Jesse James’ cousin and practically his twin, and sides Jesse during the Civil War. But when Jesse turns outlaw post-war, so does Jeston. The novel follows the James Gang through their long and violent career, including their disastrous Northfield, Minnesota raid.

JESSE WOODSON JAMES (1847-1882) is so well-known and his life so full of incident (he once dined with BILLY THE KID!) I’ll only briefly summarise his career. A farm boy born in Clay County, Missouri, he was the son of a former Baptist Preacher. In 1863, whilst the Civil War raged, Union troops tortured Jesse’s step-father almost to death and may have lashed 16 year old Jesse. Next spring Jesse was part of ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson’s Confederate guerrilla band, alongside his brother FRANK (1843-1915.) He was an adolescent plunged into the savage cauldron of war and forever changed by it.

A young JESSE JAMES

After the war, he couldn’t settle down to law-abiding pursuits, but probably took part in the first daylight armed bank robbery in the United States during peacetime, in Liberty, Missouri in 1866. Over the next 16 years Jesse and Frank robbed trains and banks, killing and stealing, and fought a running war with the Pinkerton’s Detective agency. They often allied with some other Missouri farm boys turned outlaw - the YOUNGER BROTHERS, COLE, JOHN, JIM and BOB.

By 1882 most of the gang had been killed or captured. In that year Jesse himself was slain – shot in the back of the head whilst hanging a picture in his St. Joseph, Missouri home. The murderer was ROBERT FORD, (1862-1892) almost the last of his gang, who betrayed Jesse for the $5,000 bounty on his head.

Robert Ford

One of the notable things about Jesse is that, for a ‘western’ outlaw, he rarely ventured west of Missouri, and sometimes operated as east as Alabama and West Virginia. He was really more a disaffected Confederate raiding in settled country than the product of a lawless frontier.

Jesse has been depicted innumerable times in movies and TV. His son Jesse James Jr. portrayed him in two silent movies in 1921. Since then he’s been portrayed by everyone from pop singer Rick Nelson (in  a 1967 episode of the TV Series ‘Hondo’) to Brad Pitt in ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.’ Other Jesse’s include Roy Rogers, Clayton Moore, Audie Murphy, Robert Wagner, Lee Van Cleef and James Coburn. CHRISTOPHER JONES depicted him in a 1965 TV series.

Christopher Jones as Jesse

Two of the best movies about him are, IMHO, ‘Jesse James’ (1939) where Jesse was portrayed by TYRONE POWER and Frank was played by HENRY FONDA,

Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda 

and ‘The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid’ (1972.) The latter broke the mould in having an actor – ROBERT DUVALL – playing Jesse who actually looked like him!

Robert Duvall (on right) as Jesse

Ralph Cotton hit the ground running with WHILE ANGELS DANCE, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The last time I looked 84% of the reviews were 5 star: I also gave it a 5 star review myself on Amazon.co.uk and Goodreads, something I very rarely do. My review:

Authentic, blackly-humorous, wire-taut

Jeston Nash is a teenager from Kentucky who finds himself plunged into the American Civil War at its most hellish – the savage clashes of rival guerrilla bands on the Missouri borderlands. Jeston is almost a twin for his cousin Jesse James – and becomes a member of Jesse’s gang in the turbulent years after the war, including the infamous raid on Northfield, Minnesota and the gang’s decline afterwards. Along the way he meets legendary figures like Cole Younger, Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp. Cotton is confident enough to sideline some of the more familiar incidents and make this oft-told story his own. He describes farm boys turned into hardened, traumatised killers with absolute unsentimental authority. For these reckless, desperate young men are as much victims of the war as those they slay. Men who march to the beat of the ‘funeral drum’ in their heads and live one jump ahead of a posse, a bullet, or a ‘hemp-waltz.’ The prose is wire-taut, Hemingway-like. When humour intrudes – usually very black and stemming from Jeston’s wildly unpredictable associate ‘Quiet’ Jack - one laughs with relief. So authentic it’s like opening a journal from these momentous times. And fully deserving its nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

Other reviewers:

‘ANGELS DANCE may well be the most spiritual in-depth western novel ever written.’

‘It is easy to laugh, cry, and at times almost bleed right along with his fictional outlaws.’

‘Best account of The James Gang ever written.’

https://www.amazon.com/While-Angels-Dance-Times-Jeston/dp/1456536133

ANDREW McBRIDE on how the book and film of ELMORE LEONARD’s HOMBRE helped inspire his novel THE PEACEMAKER

I’ve been fortunate enough to receive wide acclaim already for my Sundown Press novel THE PEACEMAKER, including 5 star reviews from 2 of the most successful western authors in the business. Spur award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author ROBERT VAUGHAN describes it as ‘a great book’. Meanwhile RALPH COTTON (also a Pulitzer-prize nominated novelist) writes: ‘For pure writing style, McBride’s gritty prose nails the time and place of his story with bold authority. …this relatively new author has thoroughly, and rightly so, claimed his place among the top Old West storytellers.’ I’m very grateful to both Robert & Ralph for their fantastic support.

One of the biggest influences on me, writing THE PEACEMAKER and my other western novels, was HOMBRE – the 1961 book written by ELMORE LEONARD, and the superb 1967 film made from it.

Book and film are both set in 1880s Arizona. The central character is John Russell, a white man kidnapped by Apaches as a child and raised by them. This is historically accurate: various Native American tribes carried off Mexican and American women and children during raids, and some of the boy captives grew to be warriors amongst their captors. Here’s a real Apache captive: SANTIAGO (or JIMMY) MCKINN, a Mexican-Irish boy held by Geronimo’s band until 1886. 

I saw the movie long before I read the book, and it instantly became one of my favourite westerns. I particularly liked PAUL NEWMAN’s John Russell, an effortlessly cool, counter-culture loner who, after being freed from Apache captivity, returns to them. He prefers living with wild Indians to (supposedly) civilised white society.

I read the novel much later. Indeed I got my copy signed by Elmore Leonard himself at a reading he gave in England c. 1990. He struck me as a charming man. One of the observations about writing he made was that he enjoyed writing the first 100 pages of a book (typically 300 pages long), and the last 100, but he hated the middle 100, which he likened to being stuck in the middle of a tunnel.

 I was struck by the differences between book and film.

 Usually films are edited down from books, but in the case of HOMBRE, the movie expands on the book, beefing up the main female protagonist’s part, giving a really juicy role to DIANE CILENTO,

adding extra characters and scenes and also dialogue (courtesy of the renowned team of IRVING RAVETCH and HARRIET FRANK JR.) that might be just as taut and effective as Leonard’s. And adding salty humour that the book lacks. 

(Newman almost stumbles upon Cilento undressing. She’s irate he’s not made his presence known sooner.

Cilento: ‘You could at least have cleared your throat.’

Newman: ‘I couldn’t. My heart was in it.’)

The book is done via first person narration from the least memorable of the colourful bunch of characters Leonard assembles. This style of reportage can have a distancing effect, especially when the central character – John Russell – is so mysterious, a man of few (barely any) words, who keeps his emotions deeply hidden. And the film definitely improves on the book by letting Russell articulate about what really angers him – the treatment of the Apaches by the white man. In the novel most of that’s left unsaid.

All of which sounds like a criticism of the book and yet… HOMBRE is one of the few novels I would willingly give 5 stars to. The writing is so good! As one critic put it: "Nobody writes less and says more than Elmore Leonard." The prose totally reflects its desert setting by being spare, stark and uncluttered, with barely a 3 syllable word in view; in brief exchanges of dialogue words impact almost like bullets. Characters (particularly Russell) fascinate as much by what’s not revealed about them as what is. It’s only at the end that you realise what a tense, riveting, white-knuckle ride this book has been. An extra-ordinary novel. 

Action in HOMBRE

As for the film, it’s every bit as good, with tremendous performances from the cast. DIANE CILENTO plays one of the most memorable female characters in western film, RICHARD BOONE is an outstanding villain

and there’s first rate performances by two of America’s greatest character actors -

 FREDERICK MARCH

 and MARTIN BALSAM. 

In smaller roles you’ve also got CAMERON MITCHELL and FRANK SILVERA before they re-united in TV’s ‘High Chaparral.’

Like that show, HOMBRE captures the harshness and astonishing beauty of Southern Arizona through its great location photography. That’s something I’ve tried to reflect in my writing, particularly in THE PEACEMAKER, which is set in the same environment. I’ve also followed HOMBRE in aiming for a spare, economical writing style and laconic dialogue, appropriate for the setting of the book. I’ve tried for a similar tautness and gritty authenticity, while my hero, Calvin ‘Choctaw’ Taylor does owe something to the outsider quality of John Russell as Paul Newman portrayed him.

I’m not claiming for one minute to be as good a writer as Leonard; but I don’t mind admitting that I aspire to be!

BLURB for THE PEACEMAKER:

Eighteen-year-old scout Calvin 'Choctaw' Taylor believes he can handle whatever life throws his way. He’s been on his own for several years, and he only wants to make his mark in the world. When he is asked to guide peace emissary Sean Brennan and his adopted Apache daughter, Nahlin, into a Chiricahua Apache stronghold, he agrees—but then has second thoughts. He’s heard plenty about the many ways the Apache can kill a man. But Mr. Brennan sways him, and they begin the long journey to find Cochise—and to try to forge a peace and an end to the Indian Wars that have raged for so long. During the journey, Choctaw begins to understand that there are some things about himself he doesn’t like—but he’s not sure what to do about it. Falling in love with Nahlin is something he never expected—and finds hard to live with. The death and violence, love for Nahlin and respect for both Cochise and Mr. Brennan, have a gradual effect on Choctaw that change him. But is that change for the better? Can he live with the things he’s done to survive in the name of peace?

 

EXTRACT:
Choctaw blinked sweat and sunspots out of his eyes and began to lower the field glasses; then he glimpsed movement.

He used the glasses again, scanning nearer ground, the white sands. He saw nothing.

And then two black specks were there suddenly, framed against the dazzling white. They might have dropped from the sky.

They grew bigger. Two horsebackers coming this way, walking their mounts. As he watched they spurted into rapid movement, whipping their ponies into a hard run towards him.

The specks swelled to the size of horses and men. Men in faded smocks maybe once of bright colour, their long hair bound by rags at the temple. They had rifles in their hands.

Breath caught in Choctaw’s throat. Fear made him dizzy. His arms started to tremble. He knew who was coming at him so fast.

Apaches.

And you killed them or they killed you.

**** 

To buy THE PEACEMAKER visit Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Peacemaker-Andrew-McBride/dp/153466937X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

or Amazon.co.uk

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peacemaker-Andrew-McBride/dp/153466937X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=