First Command by Wade Everett

 

These men were brothers; Travis could see the common whelping stamped on them. Ben Arness said, “This is Pete Rink. His brother, Oney.”

“Hidey,” the other one said.

“The woman is their wife,” Arness said. “Name’s Esther.”

“Their wife?” Travis said.

“She be,” Owney Rink said. “Pete and me shared the same breast as little yonkers. Somehow we never lost the habit of sharin’.” He looked at Travis as though he expected him to make something out of it, because others had. “Wimmin is scarce out here. Esther’s satisfied. So’re we. If you don't like it, ride on. Got no use for the army anyway.”

“Me neither,” Pete Rink said.

This brief novel [142 pages] is a marvel.

Essentially a cavalry procedural in which Lieutenant Jefferson Travis receives his first command and commits to doing the right thing come hell or high water.

Everett was a nom de plume for Will Cook, himself a former US Cavalry veteran, among many other things in a colorful and eventful life.

That real-world experience shows here.

While written as a formulary Western, this novel exceeds that formula.

Men and women both are more than the surface characteristics that we usually see, where lesser authors use a character trait or two to serve as “color” while they push pawns around the plot.

Everett’s humans are real, not all good, not all bad—but when they are bad, they are as bad as it gets.

The novel is full of incident, full of characters second guessing where lesser novels behave in foregone conclusive manners.

Having not read Cook in his Everett guise before I don’t know if my evaluation of this novel is because I was taken by surprise or because it actually is a superior piece of Western art.

I lean heavily on the latter.

142 pages of real men, real women experiencing tragedy, loss, heartache, disappointment, and enjoying a small [often very small] redemption here and there.

A novel written by a man with real world experience for adults who know the world ain’t black and white.

This novel earns an easy A+.