Promised Lands
A NOVEL OF THE TEXAS REB
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Elizabeth Crook's vast yet intimate novel of the Texas Revolution takes us beyond the traditional setpieces of the Alamo and San Jacinto to the other places where the war was fought—to the forest traces and prairies and Gulf Coast beaches, and to the hearts of the novel's vibrant characters.
Among them: Domingo de la Rosa—the great Tejano ranchero, implacable and devout, for whom the fight against the Anglo "heretics" is nothing less than a holy war. Hugh Kenner—a physician whose son has run away to the war. Hugh will discover the heroic strength of his compassion, and also its brutal cost. Katie Kenner—Hugh's restless daughter, a refugee caught up in the massive human stampede known as The Runaway Scrape, who finds herself in love with a foreigner and responsible for the life of an orphan baby. Adelaido Pacheco—a dashing tobacco smuggler loyal to no cause but his own, a man without a country and in peril of becoming a man without a soul. Crucita Pacheco—Adelaido's beautiful sister who has lost her family, all but Adelaido, in the cholera epidemic of 1832. Feeling that God has forsaken her, she enters Domingo de la Rosa's employ as a spy against the Anglo rebels, and discovers an improbable love. Through these people and others, Promised Lands brings a myth-encrusted chapter of American history to authentic life. Elizabeth Crook demonstrates once again a stunning command of her period and a passionate regard for her characters. Promised Lands bears the hallmark of a master novelist: a grand vision, rendered on an unforgettably human scale.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers of Crook's second historical novel (after The Raven's Bride ) will probably remember most vividly the sheer bodily pain and discomfort, described in often sickening detail, experienced by all of the characters presented here. In this absorbing narrative, Crook tells of two families, one American and one Mexican, involved in the Texas Rebellion of 1836; their lives become politically and emotionally related. Crook's careful research results in a vivid and unsparing portrait of the physical and psychological horrors of the conflict. Parents are separated from children, wives from husbands, brothers from sisters; the wounded wander the land like ghosts; there is little mercy towards prisoners. Crook's prose, while suffering occasional lapses in word choice (in what is supposed to be a romantic scene between Katie and William, Crook writes that ``William wormed in close to her''), is generally tough and wise (when, after Katie loses her grasp on her grandmother and the old woman slips into the river and is washed away, ``Katie thought how horrible for Grand to know that the final human touch she ever had was someone letting go''). Crook conveys an almost tactile sense of life in a different time.
