Impressive research solves the mysteries behind a lasting symbol of the outlaw spirit.
An investigative work examines the murky circumstances surrounding the iconic image of a wild horse in the American West.
On July 12, 1945, in the Red Desert area of southern Wyoming, Frank Robbins captured the stallion famously known thereafter as Desert Dust. Nearly every other element of this story has been disputed, including basic information about the photograph of the horse, taken by Verne Wood, thanks to incomplete records, faulty memories, the passage of time, a lawsuit between Robbins and Wood, and a natural propensity for tall tales. Gillilan, a skilled investigator by profession, deftly navigated countless twists and turns during his 17-year quest for the truth before handing over all of his findings to Papa. This book, written in the third person, painstakingly details Gillilan’s efforts in chronological order, but with flashbacks and detours when appropriate. The authors effectively capture the dogged nature of thorough research as Gillilan sifted through archives, interviewed relevant parties, and attempted to reconcile conflicting accounts. While the overall effect of the project is gripping even for readers unfamiliar with the history of Wyoming, the authors do a great job of highlighting Gillilan’s connections to the area. In the prologue, sure to grab any reader’s attention, his beloved grandfather points out Robbins at a horse auction: “He’s the son-of-a-bitch that caught Desert Dust and he had to use an airplane to do it.” Furthermore, the iconic photo of Desert Dust was prominently displayed in Gillilan’s high school and eventually in his Las Vegas home. In fact, it was his daughter’s inquiry about the photo’s significance that started this entire undertaking back in 1995, and his multiple research trips to Wyoming represent a sort of homecoming. The authors’ writing style has a conversational feel, with occasional sentence fragments in both exposition and dialogue that lend character to the text, as in this characterization of the weather in Laramie: “If it wasn’t snowing, it was windy. Not breezy, windy. The kind that blows young children and animals off doorsteps.” Most critically, the authors connect the fate of the mustangs to the larger issues that arise when wildlife preservation efforts conflict with business interests, presenting all perspectives in the controversy and demonstrating the benefits of a more nuanced approach to the interpretation of history.
Impressive research solves the mysteries behind a lasting symbol of the outlaw spirit. (map, appendix, list of sources)Pub Date: April 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73440-572-9
Page Count: 469
Publisher: STACGroup LLC
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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