Thawed Out and Fed Up
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Sam Bonham—bad husband, deadbeat dad, and possible criminal on the run from the law—wanders out of modern-day East Texas into an ersatz Wild West boomtown created for a movie that never happened. And when Sam strikes a blow against the gangsters who’ve been terrorizing the town, the locals look to him to save them. He’s no hero, but he’s stumbled upon someone who is: John Wayne. But the John Wayne of this story is not the stalwart lawman of Hollywood films—he’s a seventy-two-year-old man who had himself cryogenically frozen. He’s weak, bald, frail…and unrecognizable to everyone but Sam.
In The Duke’s “defrosted” state, he’s not entirely himself. In fact, he believes he’s actually Ethan Edwards, the character he played in The Searchers, one of Wayne’s most beloved films. Ethan or Duke or Marion Morrison, at his side Sam learns how to be a man, and a hero—and a pretty good shot! As he takes on the Old West gang of thugs, he finds that he might have become a family man at last. But back in the real world, someone has his eye on Sam’s wife, and if Sam doesn’t get back soon, the results could be devastating.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his sophomore novel, Brown (Play Dead) takes readers on another genre bending journey, this time through the desert of West Texas. Following the trend of other sci-fi westerns, a la Cowboys and Aliens, Brown puts his own spin on the hybrid genre with a kitschy book narrated in a relentless Texas twang by Sam Bonham, a modern day outlaw and deadbeat dad. After meeting his wife s new boyfriend, Bonham wakes from a blind drunk with blood on his hands. He comes off as more pathetic than heroic when he runs from the law and, literally, comes to the end of the road before discovering an anachronistic old West town. Bonham is helped by a cryogenically frozen and defrosted John Wayne (a campy deus ex-machina), but too much of the novel s forward thrust depends on Bonham correctly identifying the decrepit Duke. Brown slowly reveals the events of Bonham s drunken night through his dreams and this obvious, but effective, propulsion presents the truth about Bonham. With self-awareness and a narrator who isn t trying to be a hero, this brief, campy novel is charming. Your disbelief need only be suspended for the time it takes to quick draw in this rapid read.
