The Crossings
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
It's the Arizona Territory. The year, 1848. The year the Mexican War ended. Fate and blazing pistols have just thrown together reporter and part-time drunk Marion T. Bell and the very nearly legendary John Charles Hart, mustanger and scout, in the Little Fanny Saloon. Plying the river-trade across the Colorado to the gold fields of California in the north, and war-torn Mexico to the south, the town of Gable's Ferry has sprung up overnight—lacking only a church, a schoolhouse and a jail.
Though some would say that only the jail was needed.
A rough place in a lawless era. About to become a hell of a lot more so one night when Hart, Bell and the easy-going giant Mother Knuckles stumble upon Elena, a fierce, young, badly wounded Mexican woman near the banks of the Colorado. She's naked. She's been bullwhipped, knifed and branded. And she tells them about the kidnap, rape and servitude she and her sister have endured at the hands of las hermanas de lupo, the deadly Valenzura Sisters and their henchman, the deserter Paddy Ryan, at the well-manned slave-camp across the river aptly called Garanta del Diablo—Mouth of the Devil.
It's just three hundred years since Cortez. Only three hundred years since the Old Gods of Mexico were in their full and fearsome flower.
Tezcatlipoca, god of the moon and the night. Tlazolteotl, Eater of Filth. Xipe, Lord of the Flayed.
Blood for rain. Blood for bounty.
For many, like the Valenzura Sisters, they have never died.
And Elena's sister's still there.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Stephen King accepted his lifetime achievement garland from the National Book Foundation in November, he spoke of several genre authors worthy of an award nomination, giving Ketchum the most extensive accolade. Ketchum's writing has been praised for its vigor, yet reviled for its violence, ever since his controversial debut with Off Season (1980). This novella showcases both aspects of Ketchum's work. Set in 1848, it describes the attempt by three men narrator Marion T. Bell, an erstwhile reporter who's seen combat in Mexico; John Charles Hart, a renowned scout; and "Mother" Knuckles, Hart's burly, kindly best friend to rescue from horrific slavery in Mexico one Celine, teenage sister of Elena; the latter was kidnapped along with her sister weeks before, but has escaped and run across the path of the trio. The three men and Elena, guns at the ready, raid the slave-trading camp, crowded with buyers, in an extended, gory shootout that also offers glimpses of sexual violence, including bestiality. There's no doubt that Ketchum is a talented writer he sets scenes and draws characters with a firm, quick hand, and his prose can blister on the page but his vision in this novel is so brutal and dark that most readers will close the book with not only admiration but also relief, as if waking from a nightmare in which flashes of lightning offer glimpses of nearly unspeakable cruelty. Ketchum can rightly be called the Goya of horror literature.
