Product Description
In this sequel to Jade: Outlaw, Jade, a rough man of the old West, molded by a tragic past, has fallen for Rain, a woman raised by Indians, a symbol of all that he hates and all that he is.
Now these two outcasts, struggling to build their own relationship, face a West that is changing. As Jade becomes the Law, he must deal with “progress”: greedy cattle barons, religious righteousness, political aspirations, railroads, Civil War remnants, prejudice and outlaws.
Now these two outcasts, struggling to build their own relationship, face a West that is changing. As Jade becomes the Law, he must deal with “progress”: greedy cattle barons, religious righteousness, political aspirations, railroads, Civil War remnants, prejudice and outlaws.
From the Author
JADE: THE LAW
Review by Ed Conroy in the San Antonio Express-News. How difficult can it be for a former outlaw to become the sheriff of a dirt-poor pioneer Texas settlement in 'the Devil's country' in the years just following the Civil War?
Ask Jade, the hero of San Antonio writer Robert Flynn's latest novel -- and while you're at it, ask Rain, his wife, a white woman who lived for years as an Indian squaw.
Or you might ask Jubal, the outcast Buffalo soldier Jade hires as his deputy, or Cletis, the scheming son of the big-time rancher "General" Tezel, who with his father wants to restore the Confederacy and has hired the illiterate evangelist Brother Gabe to spread the gospel of white supremacy and sheer meanness.
And, oh yes, you should ask the spirit of Mattie, the forgotten whore lynched by a mob of settlement people just before Jade arrived -- if you can find a capable medium.
In this sequel to his novel "Jade: Outlaw," Flyn vividly peoples the starkly brutal world of the Texas frontier with a fascinating cast of characters whose conflicts over barbed wire, prostitutes, horses, race, religion, education, taxes, water, railroads and even -- after decades -- human rights and the tourist business remarkably parallel the political dynamics of contemporary Texas.
In a world where guns, greed and prejudice run rampant, Jade struggles mightily to work for the common good, seeking to uphold the law and respect for the rights of others. Rain aids him, sometimes with a shotgun in hand, as does pastor Wilbur and his wife, Hannah, who for a time try to speak truth to power despite all odds.
Flynn brilliantly employs a directly simple, subtle and at times sardonic narrative voice to tell this tale. It is alternately tough and tender, succinct and sweet, cadenced to the clip-clop of a horse trotting down Main Street, the hullabaloo of a steam locomotive triumphantly making its way into town amid a jubilant crowd's hoopla, and, of course, to the shots of guns of many kinds fired in self-defense, anger, treachery and haste.
And what a tale it is, of a settlement that becomes a town in spite of opposition from surrounding ranchers who refuse to recognize the law, and citizens who don't see the point of paying taxes despite their admitted need for a sheriff.
Through chronicling Jade's struggles to bring some ordinary order into what eventually becomes Jade Town, Flynn makes clear that the cost of many of our male ancestors' genocidal policies toward Indians, systematic abuse of women and fears of the "mongrelization" of the "white race" was massive social trauma of immensely tragic proportions.
Jade and Rain amazingly live long enough to see Jade Town become a ghost town surpassed by Cletis' rival Augurville (which gets the railroad) and to even see themselves become local legends. What remains of Jade Town is transformed into a tourist trap by a few locals who distort its history, while Augurville's boys go off to fight the Spanish in Cuba and the Philippines as America's destiny becomes ever more manifest.
This is, indeed, a cautionary tale, a parable if you will, of what can happen when naked self-interest is allowed to run roughshod over the lives of people with little more than a good sheriff to protect them against unabashed power.
That it is set in the mythic West, where the cowboy was once the unquestioned hero of the finely embroidered myths of how that land was won, gives pause to consider how many of the distorted ideas and ideals from that time might be wreaking havoc still.
