Customer Reviews

Mackenna's Gold

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You should be nice to old dying Apaches you find in the desert, they may draw a map in the sand for your kindness, a map to the Lost Adams Diggings, where the gold nuggets are the size of crickets, and they're just laying around on the ground, waiting for a prospector to fill his saddlebags. The dialogue in this book is positively silly. Pelon, the brutish half-Mexican, half-Apache, one hundred percent outlaw bandit speaks as if he was educated at Oxford, and has a sense of honor not normally found in your average outlaw bandit/murderer. Mackenna knows the map to the gold, so Pelon can't kill him, at least not until the location of the gold is pointed out. Mackenna, of course, is busy trying not to fall in love with the beautiful young hostage, and avoiding the amorous intentions of Pelon's Apache sister. Western escapest literature from the early sixties.

While never a cimena classic, the 1969 film adaptation has always been one of my favorite "nothing special" movies, so that was enough for me to read the Will Henry novel when a used copy passed through my hands.

The novel is radically different from the film, the novel is much slower and less exciting, but still good-enough escapist Western fiction on it's own terms. The previous reviewers have done a good job detailing the differences, so I have nothing to add there.

If you are a fan of western fiction, you'll not be bored,and Henry is an established name in the genre. If you've seen the movie, check out the novel and see how different it is from the film adaptation.

This is Will Henry's novel that was the basis for the movie of the same name from 1969 starring Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif. The movie is a fine adaptation. I love the movie, and found the book entertaining, if only for discovering the differences between it and the movie. For example, Heshke, the fetching but nasty Apache girl is called Sally in the book. And her nose has been cut off. And she doesn't meet her demise anywhere near like in the movie. The movie version is far better. In fact, all the characters are better developed in the movie. Colorado is called Pelon in the book and the deadly encounter between him and Hachita is much different in the book. And the words of Pelon, at the end of his fight with Hachita, are truly laughable. Cartoon dialog at its finest! In the book, there is no band of Apache's who enter the gold canyon while MacKenna is there. And the white girl helps out MacKenna much more during his fight with Hachita (in the movie, the final fight is with Colorado). Let's just say that she handles an ax better in the book than she does the belt in the movie.

A character completely missing from the movie, Mal-y-pais, Sally's mother, survives along with our two heroes. She is one of the more interesting characters in the book. In the book, almost ludicrously, MacKenna cusses and beats the white girl at one point! And earlier in the book she suggests they get married after this is all over! MacKenna's treatment of the white girl (i.e. the cussing and beating) in the book might be more realistic, but definitely not in keeping with Gregory Peck's image! The movie wisely avoids these character defects. Tibbs is an Apache half-breed in the book. Pelon/Colorado does a lot more killing in the book. Watch out for that serape!