Johnny McBride has been running all his life Since age six, when he discovered his mother drowned in her wedding dress in the stock tank on their ranch, someone has been trying to kill young Johnny McBride. Everyone in Van Horn, Texas, it seems—from the scion of the feuding clan on the surrounding ranch to his own witless father and brother—wants to do him in. But Johnny has his defenses. Armed with his own brand of dark humor and unique take on the infamous "McBride luck," Johnny has the friendship of the green-eyed, blonde vaquero, Jose Navarette, who once rode with Pancho Villa. Moreover, he has the tenacity born of deprivation and the desert itself. From the West Texas wilderness, cratered and barren as the moon, to the jungles of Viet Nam and the impoverished villages of Mexico, the epic journey of Johnny McBride comes full circle. On his return to his desert home, Johnny discovers a landscape so mired in the seepage of corporate lust and betrayal that not even he can outrun it.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The first half of McAfee's initially promising but ultimately disappointing second novel (after Slow Walk in a Sad Rain) concerns young Johnny McBride's struggle to maintain his integrity in the hardscrabble desert of deep West Texas. This is rough stuff for a coming-of-age novel: Johnny is at war with his abusive sheep-herding father, who may have murdered Johnny's mother and seems bent on killing him too; he's also in love with Sarah Eberhard, who belongs to one of the richest families in the small town of Van Horn. Fortunately, Johnny comes under the wise, gentle influence of Jose Navarette, an old Villista and foreman of the Eberhard ranch. Unfortunately, this attractive, serio-comic narrative of growing up on a 1960s desert ranch is the prologue to the weaker Part Two, in which Johnny's story jumps abruptly six years forward to North Vietnam, where he's serving as a Green Beret. After a botched mission, a series of improbable, Odysseus-like adventures eventually brings Johnny, now a deserter, to Mexico and into the home and arms of Jose's widow. This rushed conclusion lacks McAfee's previous feeling for the land, the people who inhabit it, their history and their hearts. Clearly, the novel wants more length, more development. McAfee is a potentially powerful writer, but he needs a broader canvas to tell this tale of generational change and global scope.
Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reading in bed with hearty laughter:),
By A Customer
This review is from: On Rims of Empty Moons (Hardcover)
I have NEVER laughed so hard, and been so drawn into a work of fiction. Not only was I loving Johnny McBride and hating Hide immediately, but I was savoring every page...i.e: not reading it when the kids were around to bother me...this is a tremendous read with so much heart and humor:) McAfee should move to the ocean and write full time and honor all of us with further works of art!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A jouney noval without being predictable.,
By A Customer
This review is from: On Rims of Empty Moons (Hardcover)
From the opening page the humor starts and Johnny McBride begins the journey of his life. With the humor born of a lifetime of experience and the poetic use of language John P. MaAfee brings the world a book about life and making decisions. From the West Texas cow county of the west, you will travel with McBride even further west until he ends up in Southeast Asia. After that it is back west by a means almoast unbelievable that McAfee makes real. Then the questions are answered, even some that didn't seem to be questions in the first place. A truely enjoyable read, it was hard to put down and I did so only to preserve the domestic tranquility. Then it was up early to finish before going to work. McAfee has gone beyond SLOW WALK IN A SAD RAIN. This book is the must read of 1998!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Crazy inventiveness, wild sense of humor,
By TXKokopell@AOL.com (San Antonio, TX) - See all my reviews
This review is from: On Rims of Empty Moons (Hardcover)
If you've enjoyed the work of Cormac McCarthy, then you should not miss "On Rims of Empty Moons. McAfee wanders over similar terrain as McCarthy, but he has the craziest imagination you've seen in print for years, and a wild sense of humor that finds laughs even in the midst of the goriest events and the blackest tragedies. The book takes the reader on a crazy journey from the dry landscapes of West Texas and northern Mexico to the steamy jungles of VietNam, and accomplishes all without a false note, because the author knows intimately the places and the ways of life he talks about. My personal thanks to McAfee and his publishers at Texas Tech Press for a book in which finally an Anglo author writes about Mexico without making the speech of the characters and the language they use sound like snippets of dialogue from an old Cisco Kid movie. Can't wait for the movie version! (Nahh! Hollywood couldn't cope with this kind of imagination without emulsifying and adulterating it!)
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
