NO LOOKIN' BACK

A Southerner joins the Union Army and ends up forging a new life in the West in this sprawling novel from a husband-and-wife team.

As the story opens, Thomas Jefferson Summers is facing the end of his life at the age of 60. The totality of that life unfolds as the book flashes back to 1862, when Tom, 16, and his brother, John Adams Summers, 19, set off to fight for the Union Army during the Civil War. Tom is soon injured and deserts his post to head back home (“He had seen all of the war that he wanted to see”). Tragically, he finds that his parents have died and his Tennessee town has burned to the ground. And that’s just in the first 30 pages, with the rest of the narrative following Tom as he heads west, settles down, starts a family, and forges a new life in an untamed territory. Tom’s trek takes him up the Mississippi and then, via horseback, to Oklahoma, where he eventually ends up near a settlement called Camp Supply, builds a thriving cattle farm, and meets the love of his life after seeing her photograph in a newspaper. Together, they raise their children on the frontier, battling bandits, the weather, and more. This epic tale of perseverance, love, and loss includes attempted rape, murder, and other unsavory crimes in some of the wildest days of the Wild West. Called a “True-to-Life” tale, the Riddles’ novel certainly feels authentic, moves at a fast clip, and introduces readers to some rich characters, namely Tom and his family members, whom readers will care about. But the story is not without its problems. It sometimes indulges in clichés, from backwoods Southern bumpkins in Arkansas to a tobacco-spitting chuckwagon cook and a ruthless, poker-playing bandit—there’s even a scene featuring snakes, a horse, and a river, which evokes Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, one of the greatest Westerns of all time. On the plus side, there are vivid descriptions of harsh weather and brutal people. But for the most part, the audience has seen or read all of this before. Even what should be the tale’s biggest twist involving Tom is inevitable. Still, the story will satisfy lovers of Westerns even if the narrative is often predictable.

An engaging, if familiar, Western tale that should make fans of the genre happy.