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Although this is not a crowd pleaser like Dona Flor or The War of the Saints, it is Amado's greatest novel. He returns to the social concerns of his early novels but treats them with a depth and richness that are the fruition of his long career.

In general, I am an admirer of Amado's work, but this is not his best effort. He has once again introduced us to the cast of characters that he grew up with in his native Bahia - the miserably poor of the sertao, the vaqueros, the itinerant peddlars (one of which - a Turk again, no less - is the main character), the narrow-minded clergy, all milling around and not really going much of anywhere. The "Showdown" is a faceoff between bandits, which is a culmination of the events in this little backwater village on the Sao Francisco.

As usual, Amado is very good at providing us with a slice of life and a variety of interesting characters, but the story is a bit too thin in this work. Not up to the level of "Dona Flor" or "Gabriela."

Incidentally, the reference to a Sudbury Horse Classic in the trade reviews for this book are obviously for some other book, apparently an English mystery of the same name. No horses here, except in an incidental way.

Jorge Amado has been writing about sex in the hinterlands of Brazil for years. It is a tired subject. Amado's writing style is tired, this being his last "book". Bahia of today (2010) is electric with multireligions, petroleum, jeitinhos among friends and non-friends, dynamic women who serve as medical missionaries, and of course a coastal scene which rivals Recife, Rio, and southern-most Brazil. None of this emerges in the writing of Amado -- just male-female disengagement, property issues and short scenes without a plot line. The title in English sounds more Texan than the dream-style of Bahianos. I prefer his earlier novels which sealed a culture in mid-century when the lid on Brazilian people was about to explode.