©1997, ProMotion, inc.
www@bookpage.com
Review by Sandy Huseby
Zeke and Ned is Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana at their vivid, colorful best. The pairing of Zeke Proctor and Ned Christie is reminiscent of Texas Rangers Call and McCrea in Lonesome Dove. The Cherokee pair fulfill the promise of that memory.
Ezekiel Proctor walked the Trail of Tears to settle in the Cherokee district of the Oklahoma Territory. The younger man, Edward Christie, serves with Zeke in the Cherokee Senate, but has much to learn about the world beyond his experience in the Territory.
Defining a narrower panorama than the broad sweep of the Dove saga, nevertheless the authors deliver a portrait of Western life that sucks the reader into Zeke and Ned as surely as the boggy creekbottoms suck down Chilly Stufflebean's mule.
Ned Christie has a hankering for Zeke's daughter, Jewel, and they take up living together. Zeke, meanwhile, vexed that his own wife, Becca, cannot uphold her wifely duties, has decided he's entitled to a second wife in keeping with the old Cherokee tradition.
Unfortunately, Zeke conveniently overlooks the fact that the woman he chooses for this role, Polly Beck, is already married and her husband, T. Spade Beck, is not inclined to part with her. Polly comes between T. Spade and a bullet from Zeke's rifle, and her untimely end launches the body of the story. T. Spade and his brothers are determined to avenge the wrong. Since the Becks are white and Zeke is Indian, they put little trust in the Indian court to conduct the trial.
McMurtry and Ossana neatly shift among the broad cast of this tale with the deftness of top-notch storytelling.
Whether in vignettes, such as the encounter between the Indian judge and the white judge, or such broad, fast-paced action as Zeke's trial (get the book, I'll divulge no description, it'll be worth it, I promise you), the authors exhibit the skill of troubadours. McMurtry and Ossana people the world of Zeke and Ned with memorable characters who come alive from their first descriptive phrases.
McMurtry's landmark capacity to create fully rounded characters of the Old West, complete with their vexations and cravings, is at its vintage best in this novel.
Sandy Huseby is a writer living in Fargo, North Dakota, and Nevis. She is online at SHuseby@aol.com.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.