Customer Reviews

Wildwood Boys: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

James Carlos Blake, the descendant of an American pirate in the Caribbean, once said he wanted to write the most violent book in American literature.

In "Wildwood Boys," he might have succeeded. But the savage narrative isn't driven only by the body count nor the visceral horror in his account of barbaric guerrilla warfare; what makes this book truly horrific is the pure poetry and haunting beauty of Blake's writing. This is the richly re-imagined story of William Anderson, the real-life bushwhacker protégé of William Quantrill, the ruthless sacker of Lawrence, Kansas. For most of the Civil War, Quantrill commanded lawless, Southern-sympathizing brigands whose mass murders, rapes and calculated terror devastated pro-Union towns in the border states -- until he was eclipsed by the living, gore-splashed myth who came to be known as Bloody Bill Anderson.

Of course, historical fiction wouldn't succeed if it didn't disturb the placid waters of allegedly true history. Blake portrays Anderson as a moral monster: a lover of dumb animals and poetry; a cold-blooded guerrilla who questioned the massacre of civilians, but did nothing to stop it; a principled leader of soulless pirate-warriors such as Jesse and Frank James, and Cole Younger; a devoutly loyal son and brother; a pathological hater of Yankees; even a handsome and gallant romantic who marries a young prostitute because she reminds him of his spirited little sister -- with whom he had a vaguely incestuous kinship.

Anderson's famous 1864 raid on Centralia, Mo., is recounted in graphic detail, reworked to blunt the razor-sharp edge of traditionally accepted accounts of the terror he wrought. And by the time Bloody Bill is shot dead a few months later, his bullet-riddled corpse photographed and desecrated by Union troopers, the reader actually feels some sympathy for one of the most prolific mass-murderers in American history.

Five solid GOLD stars for this phenomenal book! Blake grabs you by the throat from the very beginning and doesn't let up until you lay gasping for breath at book's end. Historically accurate with characters you can feel and dialogue that will leave you hanging on each word, this book is a "show-stopper' that you will read and re-read. You'll be right back at Amazon ordering his other books and, (horrors!) down at the local Public Library ordering his earlier out-of-print works. Get 'em all.......He doesn't disappoint!

Some authors you read because the journey is better than the destination, but I find with Blake it's the opposite. His action and storytelling outweigh his poetry, although there is poetry, to be sure. He writes with a passion and moves with a purpose. And yes, as other reviews state here, he does not disappoint.

All i can say about Wildwood Boys is that it made me want to fight the Unioners and rustle horses and roam to the great wild west.

Blake saddles you up and sends you out riding and raiding with Quantrill's Raiders and Bloody Bill Anderson's Gang. It was hell. The political situation was all screwed-up and the worst type of border warfare erupted all over. You'll see it all first-hand as only Blake can tell it. You'll ride like hell, fight like hell, stink like hell, and hell, some of you won't make it. Saddle up!

GREAT NOVEL. CAN'T WAIT TO SEE IF IT IS PICKED UP BY HOLLYWOOD. CLARK WROTE A VERY INTERESTING NOVEL ABOUT BLOODY BILL AND THE WILDWOOD BOYS MIXING FACT WITH FICTION.IRECOMMEND IT HIGHLY

I just finished this book, and I really liked it, both because of and despite its subject. Bloody Bill Anderson was a man who, had he survived the war, should certainly have been hanged for the war crimes he committed. His crimes rank beside those of the SS men who perpetrated the Malmedy massacre in WWII, or the slaughter of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest by the Red Army in that same conflict. Perhaps his body count wasn't quite as high, but that wasn't for lack of trying. Anderson led a band of vicious cutthroats who took scalps and ears as trophies, and wore them on their saddles, or even on their persons. Those who consider this book to be "romanticizing" Anderson miss the fact that this is not whitewashed or glossed over. Nor does Blake gloss over crimes like hanging civilians for "offenses" like giving aid to wounded enemy soldiers.

If the novel attributes some good qualities to Anderson, such personal charisma and love of literature to Anderson, so what? The truth is he probably did have at least some admirable qualities. That doesn't mean he wasn't still a monster. The Nazi archfiend Reinhard Heydrich, known as the Butcher of Prague, was said to have played the violin so beautifully that he could move listeners to tears. Hitler liked dogs and small children. This doesn't change the fact that Heydrich and Hitler were among the worst monsters the human race ever spawned. It is the same with Bloody Bill. Whatever positive attributes and character traits he had, he had, and denying them serves no useful purpose, any more than acknowleging them takes away from our recognition of his moral defects and his culpability for his crimes.

Overall, I think Blake does an outstanding job of telling an entertaining story about a very horribly flawed human being. Bloody Bill is the protagonist, and so we want to like him, but he makes himself, in the end, someone with whom we can't sympathize. He is genuinely provoked, in some ways, and that's also an accurate depiction of the Missouri border war -- some of the irregulars fighting on the Union side were every bit as vicious and evil as Bloody Bill or any of his men -- but in the end, by the choices he makes and the actions he takes, he puts himself in the wrong. My reaction as a reader was to feel some pity for the wrongs he himself suffered, but to feel sorrier for his victims, and to feel also that when he's killed in the end, he's getting his just deserts. However much he wants to go home to the wife he loves, and who loves him in return, he doesn't deserve such a happy ending, after the deeds he's done. Blake painted a portrait -- a realistic one I think -- of a man who is not a one-dimensional, caricature of evil, but someone we can still recognize as, in the final analysis, as a villain rather than a hero.

This is an excellent fictionalized account of the Kansas-Missouri war during the Civil Way. Though cowboys are on the cover there are no cowboys inside. The gorilla warfare was unheard of on the scale it was carried out by both sides during the Civil War in MIssouri. By following the life and times of William Anderson --Blake introduces the reader to the context and rationale behind these act. The events that take place in the book are accurate --and unbelievable. The correlations with the IRAQ conflict are undeniable. Be warned this a blunt accurate account. Nothing is left out or glossed over. Excellent.

excellent excellent! This is really good J.C. Blake novel. he is a master of blood and guts, without it being overpowering. The characters are lifelike, they will jump out at you. If you like western history with a little romance and a touch of palatable gore, then you've got to try Blake. I've read all of his other novels (that I can get my hands on) and have put him on my "must read" list of authors.

Blake is an outstanding prose artist, no doubt about it. But his fascination/obsession with notorious perpetrators of bloody violence can lead him to exalt the unworthy, which he does in this book. Simply put, Bloody Bill Anderson was a violent, amoral killer undeserving of the generous eulogy Blake delivers here. He depicts an Anderson who is witty, loving (even incestually), a devotee of Shakespeare, a loyal friend -- but who is occasionally forced into deploying his ultaviolent tendencies against evil, faceless, enemies. In this book he is portrayed as a sort of Rambo of the prairie. But in almost any context Anderson's actions are morally indefensible. In reality he was a sociopathic product of the sectional hatreds that tore this country apart in the 19th century. His savage actions certainly tell us something important about the struggle for the soul of America during the time of the Civil War, but his life is hardly admirable and Blake's attempt to turn him into something of an amiable, iconic figure doesn't make a lot of sense. By the time Anderson is finally killed, unless you still have an adolescent, dime-novel admiration for this unrepentant killer, his demise comes as something of a relief.