The Diezmo
A Novel
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
This novel of young men seeking glory in the Republic of Texas is “a surprisingly absorbing rendition of a terrible episode in American history” (The Oregonian).
The Diezmo tells the incredible story of the Mier Expedition, one of the most absurd and tragic military adventures in the history of Texas—a country and a state, as Rick Bass writes, that was “born in blood.” In the early days of the Republic of Texas, two young men, wild for glory, impulsively volunteer for an expedition Sam Houston has ordered to patrol the Mexican border. But their dreams of triumph soon fade into prayers for survival, and all that is on their minds is getting home and having a cool drink of water.
After being captured in a raid on the Mexican village of Mier, escaping, and being recaptured, the men of the expedition are punished with the terrible diezmo, in which one man in ten is randomly chosen to die. The survivors end up in the most dreaded prison in Mexico. There they become pawns in an international chess game to decide the fate of Texas, and with their hopes of release all but extinguished, they make one desperate, last-ditch effort to escape.
“The best literary adventure story I've read since Legends of the Fall. Full of unusual history, exciting events, timely ideas, and stunning wilderness scenery . . . a wonderfully told novel of the human capacity for survival in the face of the very worst that war can do to us.” —Howard Frank Mosher, author of Points North
“A vivid, graphic, harrowing tale of wild men and bad blood, a fable universal and timeless in its application.” —Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong
“Terrific . . . powerful.” —Los Angeles Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1842, a militia arrives in LaGrange, a town in the newly formed Republic of Texas. Its purpose is to cross into Mexico and hunt down a band of Mexican nationals who recently attacked San Antonio. Sixteen-year-old James Alexander, overcome by a mix of patriotism, vengeance and a thirst for glory, joins the ranks. What follows is a compact, cleanly written adventure and a statement against rushing headlong into the destruction of war. Like Henry Fleming, the young Union soldier in The Red Badge of Courage, Alexander is an unwilling participant in fighting more ferocious than he had imagined, but most of all he is a witness. Captured by the Mexican army, the militia manage to escape, but the harsh landscape is a pitiless foe, and the men end up back in captivity, at the dreaded Castle of Perve. Bass (Where the Sea Used to Be, etc.) writes about the natural world in vivid, effortless prose; moments of beauty are almost as frequent as instances of violence, degradation and death. The presentation of 19th-century Texas and Mexico is trustworthy, and Alexander's narrative voice never slips. Throughout, meanwhile, there is an insistent harmonic tone that reminds the reader of the current war in Iraq. As the author writes in his acknowledgments, "Decapitations, inhumane treatment of prisoners, questionable documents... all that exists now existed then."
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