HORSESHOE BEND

Put two men to work on one novel, and you may get double your money's worth-you do in this case. For this is a many-faceted, ultra-manly extravaganza, a grand house opera about the Creek Confederacy during and after young America's War of 1812. Presumably based on fact, it tells of William Weatherford, a strapping, stomping half-breed; he ""rides like a dervish"", lusts like a rabbit, and whoops up so many blood baths that Old Mad Andrew Jackson swears to hang him from a tree twenty feet high and tie the knot himself. But Bill is also a gentleman, the prized product of an Indian princess and an Alabama planter; all he really wants is to live by the laws of his tribe and defend the Great Spirit's and forests from the white settlers. And so the path of spreads out, from the Fort Mims massacre to Emuckfan and Calabee, from Pensacola and New Orieans' intrigues to hostage days at The Hermitage. Along the way, Bill marries fiery Mary Maniac, who ends up in a bordello when Bill deserts her for other girls. Some years later, after the defeat of the Creeks at and Tohopeka, Bill dies, his empire but not his Falling somewhere between honest history and pure boiling, this is a big, bud double-barrelled entertainment, always in double-.