Customer Reviews

Under A Long Sky: Women Drovers on the Chisholm Trail

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Five years after the end of the American Civil War Jefferson Pickett has the courage to visit the woman he inadvertently made a widow. He fought for the Confederate Army, her husband for the Union and the dying man asked him to take his gold watch to his wife and tell her he cared.

On arrival at the ranch, north of San Antonio in Texas,the Widow, Clara, gives him no time to explain his presence, but launches into a job offer of taking her and the women who have found refuge with her on a cattle drive to Abilene. It is the only way she can save the ranch from the rapacious demands of neighbor Medder.

An encounter with Medder fires up Jeff's quixotic nature and he agrees to boss the cattle drive. He, thirteen women and one lad set off to herd about 2,500 steers across Texas and on to Kansas on the Chisholm Trail. All of the women, with the exception of one are themselves widows and have dramas and traumas in their pasts. Their stories are gently teased out in the narrative, whilst they strive to equip themselves not only to become effective cowboys, but also to defend against Indians, marauding thieves, rapists and the wildlife. The indigenous species being rattlesnakes, scorpions, lethal water snakes and extremes of weather. The perils of the journey draw the women closer together and Jeff realises he will never see a woman again as being 'weak'. He also falls deeply in love.

Jones has a deft way of creating his characters with economy and a gift for description of scenery. There are no extraneous words, each is chosen with care and polished into place leading the reader into humour, pathos and sympathy with the ambitions of the cattle drive. It is without doubt, one of the best-structured novels I have read in some time. In addition, the research is impeccable.

A few years ago this reviewer was in Newton, on the Chisholm Trail. With a friend I stood in the middle of a railway crossing and she said, "Now, if you start walking that way, the nearest place to get some of your English tea is a thousand miles away." I looked at the flat plains stretching to infinity and wondered. Later, we were at a strip mall when dusk fell and the car park was full. No one was shopping, we were all looking at the sky, the long sky, and one of the most awe inspiring and beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. It filled the whole of the horizon and more, the vastness, the sense of space was overwhelming. What for me was so striking, was most must have been accustomed to this splendour, yet it still stopped them in their tracks. That is the Chisholm Trail.

The cattle drive was over a thousand miles, moving from one state to others. Here in UK if we travel the same distance, we could be in Gilbralter or Central Russia. True in the nineteenth century as today, with humanity, towns and cities in between. Between South Texas and Abilene, with the then tiny Fort Worth and minute settlements in between, there were barely a few hundred people. Self-reliance and neighbourliness was essential for mutual survival.

This Jones captures along with the basic decency of ordinary folk in contrast to the casual villainy and depravity flourishing where there is no law, in an endless wilderness.

Thoroughly recommended, with a guarantee you will not be disappointed. I hope we'll be seeing more of Jefferson Pickett, Lolita, Hank Pickett, Clara and Auntie. DIONE DOVER, BOOK REVIEWER...

It could have happened! Don't think of this as a "western". Think of it as an epic because that's what it is--a fast-paced, hard-hitting tale of adventure, love, heartbreaks, and sacrifices. It is the true west in the pioneer spirit and "can do" and "will do" regardless of what may come. The characters are alive and fascinating.