Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #379822 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 226 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Two-time Spur Award-winner Boggs (Camp Ford) relates the 1880s exploits of Daniel Killstraight, a Kwahadi Comanche returning from the Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Daniel's train halts at Fort Smith, Ark., just as Jimmy Comes Last, a boyhood friend, is being led to the gallows, convicted of murdering a husband and wife: a white man and Creek Indian woman. Prompted by Jimmy's grief-stricken mother, Naséca, after the hanging, Daniel, whose education sets him apart, resolves to investigate. On arriving at the reservation with the body, U.S. Indian policemen Hugh Gunter and Harvey P. Noble induct Daniel into the force. While the plot is thin, Boggs draws raw tension from it, and the relationships and setting shine: Daniel—striving at once to solve the case and reconnect with Comanche ways—is a complex, winning protagonist. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Daniel Killstraight, a Comanche student at the famed Carlisle Indian School, gets off a train in Arkansas and observes the public hanging of a convicted murderer. He is shocked to discover that the condemned man is an old friend, Jimmy Comes Last. Jimmy’s mother is there, and when she asks Daniel to find out whether her son really is the cold-hearted killer the law says he is, Daniel has no second thoughts; later, though, when he learns that the hanged man might have been innocent, he’s forced to choose between his people and the new world that his education offers him. This is a rousing story with an emotional and philosophical depth that will surprise readers who don’t expect complexity from a western. Genre veteran Boggs also explores the clash between white and native cultures, presenting them as both fundamentally different and strikingly similar. Boggs is a nimble storyteller, comfortable with tackling complex issues of race and morality while keeping the story moving at a steady pace. A good bet both for fans of traditional westerns and for those who look for more literary fare. --David Pitt

Customer Reviews

A Comanche "Jimmy Chee"?
I had great fun reading this book that is the story of an early "Metal Shirt, police" Daniel Killstraight. Killstraight returns to the Comanche reservation from the Carlisle Industrial School where he was taught to be a white man. Problem is, he's not. He arrives home just in time to see his boyhood friend executed at Fort Sill for the murder of a squaw man and his family. Killstraight promises to to find out what really happened and the way he does this is what makes the book a good read.

Like the Navajo police in Tony Hillerman's novels, Killstraight uses his knowledge of Comanche culture and custom to reveal the truth. A great way for readers to learn more about American Indian culture.