America loves a simple western. Maybe we'll cheer for a hero, or maybe we'll be gutsy revisionists and cheer for an antihero. Whatever the case, we get to have a grand old time watching strangers shoot each other. There are books out there, however, which take the American West and make it the mystery that called out to us in the first place.
If you read Butcher's Crossing looking for thrilling tales of derring-do, you'll likely be disappointed. Nobody even gets shot. It's a coming-of-age story about a young man who comes from the East to find himself and goes on a bison hunt which ends badly. That's about it, but in the middle of all the nothing is a deep meditation on what it means to seek out nature and make the mistake of finding it.
Blood Meridian, on the other hand, reads less like the Old West and more like an apocalypse. It retells the true-life story of the Glanton Gang, which was hired after the Mexican-American War to murder and scalp Native Americans. It overflows with blood and ends with a scene of an oversized, demonic, bald albino dancing. The book will keep you up at night.
It's still disappointingly difficult to find a good western from the point of view of the people who got here first, but Fools Crow does a good job of it. Following members of the Blackfeet, the author portrays a harsh world that is still imbued with dreams and spirits, slowly being eaten away by disease and foreign invaders.
I haven't even had a chance to get into crazy, mystical westerns, so already you can tell there's plenty of life in the genre.
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