Accidental Texan
A Novel
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4.9 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Now a major motion picture!
Erwin 'Harvard' Vandeer has run out of luck. After failing as an actor in Hollywood, he heads home for Boston, but when he loses all of his cash in a poker game, he finds himself stranded in dusty Abilene, Texas. However, all is not lost. Harvard meets rough and tumble oilman Merle Luskey who takes him in and puts him to work. Except working for Merle may not exactly be the stroke of luck he was hoping for.
Merle, teetering on the precipice of foreclosure, pins all his hopes on a new oil discovery to save his skin and stave off the ruthless bank. The stage is set for Harvard and Merle to embark on a high-stakes, rib-tickling adventure through the Lone Star State. They say everything's bigger in Texas, and Accidental Texan proves it right. Bigger laughter, bigger action, and an even bigger story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite his best efforts to make this a madcap, oil-well-drilling, West Texas romp, Thompson's debut novel is an uneven mix of bad jokes, cowboy cliches and unconvincing characters. Erwin Vandeveer is a movie star wannabe from Boston, a spoiled, naive young Harvard grad who was a failure in Hollywood, and who is now stuck in Abilene, Tex., broke and discouraged. Erwin links up with Merle Luskey, a wacky, drunken Texas oilman who is about to lose his drilling business due to a bank foreclosure. The two unlikely partners have just 30 days to strike oil and save the company. Opposed by a crooked banker and a fat, corrupt, sadistic sheriff, Merle and Erwin embark on a string of harebrained schemes to pay off the bad loans and stay solvent. But Merle is an unpredictable lush who gets both of them into trouble--on the order of burglary, forgery, kidnapping and industrial espionage. Aided by an aging tart named Miss Tex-Ann Big-Love and by goofy, porn-loving old cattle rancher Alton Scheermeyer, Merle and Erwin come up with a plan that just might work. The author presents unflattering and unfunny stereotypes of Texans and Yankees alike. Handsome Erwin is just too hoity-toity for the rough and tumble Texas oil fields, and the Texans here are mainly ignorant, foul-mouthed, whiskey-drinking rednecks. Abandoning its early promise of humor and adventure, this story winds up as flat and dry as West Texas itself.
