TAMING SPIRIT

In Martin’s western novel, the black sheep of a feuding family finds his own way among outlaws.

In the early 1890s, teen Alex Logan lives in the small, hard town of Loganville in the Northwest Territories of Canada—a town inhabited primarily by his clannish, ill-natured relatives. Alex is the family’s whipping boy, for reasons he doesn’t understand until he learns, as a teenager, that his mother is a member of a hated rival family, the Currys, who are responsible for the death of several Logans. As the feud heats up again, Alex’s father sends him to work at the Bar U cattle ranch to steer clear of the hostilities. There, under his newly adopted name of Alex Curry, the teen cares for the ranch’s horses and becomes particularly close to a feisty stallion named Spirit. He also gets to know a notorious American horsebreaker (and sometime bandit) named Harvey Hellman—the so-called Laramie Kid. Harvey gives Alex a nickname: Kid Curry. Alex makes a life for himself on the ranch, but when a mistake forces him into a kill-or-be-killed situation with one of his co-workers, he’s forced to flee for his life. The Laramie Kid presents him with an alternative career path: “ ‘You do know how we make a living when we aren’t working the local ranches?’ Laramie said. ‘Robbing banks?’ I asked. He grinned. ‘Well, I guess you tell it the way you see it, Kid Curry, and sometimes it’s trains too.’ ” Martin does a convincing job evoking the violence and cruelty of the cowboy era while still including the more romantic aspects, including noble outlaws, beautiful milkmaids, and life-affirming friendships between man and horse. The novel was inspired by the years the Sundance Kid spent at the historical Bar U Ranch in the early 1890s, and fans of the folklore surrounding Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid will enjoy this gripping and well-paced offshoot, a reminder that Alberta was a part of the Old West as much as Montana or Wyoming.

An immersive Western coming-of-age story.