And Not to Yield: A Novel of the Life and Times of Wild Bill Hickok [Paperback]

Randy Lee Eickhoff (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Forge Books (2004)
• ASIN: B000OTPYXU
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,320,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly poor, September 9, 2005

By 

S. Michener "western lover" (new york unfortunately) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: And Not to Yield: A Novel of the Life and Times of Wild Bill Hickok (Mass Market Paperback)

This book moves at a snail's pace. As "a novel of the life and times of Wild Bill Hickok" it does nothing to draw the reader in, and care about the characters. When the extensive dream sequence appears in the middle of the book, I was left wondering what King Arthur and the knights of the round table had to do with Wild Bill. Did I miss something? I suppose this is some inferior use of metaphor, but there had been no effort to set it up, and therefore it lacked relevance.
Like the other review here I can't understand how this was a winner of the Western Heritage Award for Best Western Novel. I will stick with Spur award winners from now on. For readers who are looking for true western literature with metaphor and imagery, check out Win Blevins "Stone Song." That was a Spur award winner, and one of the best western themed books I've ever read.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars So-so retelling of a western legend, July 31, 2005

By 

Mr. E (My House) - See all my reviews

This review is from: And Not to Yield: A Novel of the Life and Times of Wild Bill Hickok (Hardcover)

While reading "And Not To Yield" I was constantly reminded of better novels, such as Thomas Berger's "Little Big Man". Eickhoff sets out to accomplish many of the things Berger did in his tale of the life of a wild west hero, but the narrative is always just a little flatter and tamer and the events just a little less exciting than those of Little Big Man. I realize Berger was writing a fictional account, but surely the life of Wild Bill Hickock could have produced a more gripping biographical novel. This is just a dry recounting of Hickock's career with some dreams and visions of mythological characters thrown in, in an attempt to provide Hickock with motivation.

And perhaps I'm nitpicking here, but Eickhoff's choice of words in at least one instance was very poorly researched and jarringly anachronistic: In chapter 29, on page 190, we learn this about Hickock's early enemy in the Rock Creek incident: "McCanles had a number of "wannabes" hanging around him at the time..." 'Wannabes' is a word first used among fans of the singer Madonna in the mid 1980s to describe those who dressed and acted like her. 'Wannabes' does NOT belong in the vocabulary of a gunfighter of the 1860s and 1870s. I'm really kind of shocked that Eickhoff and his editors included this word. Sycophants, henchmen, cronies, sidekicks, emulators... Any of these would have been better than 'wannabes'.

I don't really understand how this novel won the 2005 Western Heritage Award for Best Western Novel, but I guess western stories are few and far between today and the judges had little to work with.