The Madstone
A Novel
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
“A wonderfully transporting tale of love in the Old West” (People Magazine) and “a brilliant, beautiful page-turner” (Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Double Blind) about a pregnant young mother, her child, and the frontier tradesman who helps them flee vengeful outlaws, in a work that echoes Lonesome Dove and News of the World.
Texas hill country, 1868. As nineteen-year-old Benjamin Shreve tends to business in his workshop, he witnesses a stagecoach strand a passenger. When the man, a treasure hunter, persuades Benjamin to help track down the vanished coach—and a mysterious fortune left aboard—Benjamin is drawn into a drama whose scope he could never have imagined, for they discover on reaching the coach that its passengers include Nell, a pregnant young woman, and her four-year-old son, Tot, who are fleeing Nell’s brutal husband and his murderous brothers.
Having told the Freedmen’s Bureau the whereabouts of her husband’s gang—a sadistic group wanted for countless acts of harassment and violence against Black citizens—Nell is in grave danger. If her husband catches her, he will kill her and take their son. Learning of their plight, Benjamin offers to deliver Nell and Tot to a distant port on the Gulf of Mexico, where they can board a ship to safety. He is joined in this chivalrous act by two other companions: the treasure hunter whose stranding began this endeavor and a restless Black Seminole who is a veteran of wars on both sides of the Rio Grande and who has an escape plan of his own.
Fraught with jeopardy from the outset, the trek across Texas becomes still more dangerous as buried secrets, including a cursed necklace, emerge. And even as Benjamin falls in love with Nell and imagines a life as Tot’s father, vengeful pursuers are never far behind. With its vivid characters and expansive canvas, The Madstone calls to mind Lonesome Dove, yet Elizabeth Crook’s new novel is a singular achievement. Told in Benjamin’s resolute and unforgettable voice, it is full of eccentric action, unrelenting peril, and droll humor—a thrilling and beautifully rendered story of three people sharing a hazardous and defining journey that will forever bind them together.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Elizabeth Crook’s Western saga is dripping with danger, romance, and period detail. Set in 1860s Texas, The Madstone follows the path of 19-year-old carpenter Benjamin as he struggles to save the life of the pregnant Nell and her young son, Tot. When the three go on the run from Nell’s abusive husband’s ruthless brothers in Benjamin’s covered wagon, they encounter a couple of colorful traveling companions and a necklace that might just be cursed. Crook’s tale takes the form of a letter written later by Benjamin, whose voice feels totally authentic, right down to his dialect and misspellings. Whether you’re looking for suspense, a heartfelt love story, or a slice of old America, The Madstone has it all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Crook (The Which Way Tree) sets her underwhelming epistolary novel in 1868 Texas, where a young man gets in over his head after lending help to a group of strangers. The ordinary life of Benjamin Shreve, a Texas woodworker, is upended after he encounters a pregnant woman named Nell and her four-year-old son, Tot, on the run from her missing husband's brothers, a rageful bunch known as the Swamp Fox gang. (They claim Nell murdered her husband, while she maintains he abandoned her in poverty after the Civil War.) Crook's narrative is framed as a letter from Benjamin to Tot, recounting the treacherous journey Benjamin takes to escort mother and son to safety along with their fellow stagecoach passenger, Dickie. As the unlikely comrades attempt to reach the Louisiana border, Dickie claims to have unearthed a cursed necklace that may carry misfortune to whoever possesses it, and Benjamin falls in love with Nell. While this has the exciting and fast-paced plot of a serviceable western, there's nothing special in Benjamin's voice. "Reckoning offers more peace to the heart, as it has an end," he claims in his letter, but his curious lack of intimacy and distance from the story's tense events leave little evidence of such a reckoning on the page. Readers will have a tough time seeing this one through to the end.
