Wounded [Hardcover]

Everett, an African American, depicts an edenistic life for the protagonist John Hunt in Wyoming's high desert. John is not average cowboy in the frontier, and by the book's end he proves this fact many times over.

John, an Exeter-educated African American preppie, who studied art at UC Berkley, matured into a heterosexual vegetarian whose modern feelings for women and acceptance to homosexuality would make him hip in the city, but make him really hip in cowfolk country, works with large animals on his 1500 acre farm - in short, not the average cowboy of literature.

While John the widower gravitates to his beautiful female interest, Morgan, he befriends his college buddy's son, David, whose sexuality curses his father, especially when he condemns his son in humiliatingly public places. And, while this happens, things in John's Eden begin to rot. Hate crimes and physical abuse grows in John's haven. People begin to say things in "their groups" which contradict their persona. "I am like that three-legged coyote. . . I can't recognize my own tracks until I stop moving." John realizes that friends to his face may be enemies of his race when he does not stand in their vision.

Predominantly dialogue, this book is rich. Many pert witticisms remind me of Carl Hiaasen, Janet Evanovich, Jeff Lindsay and others of the 21st century best selling world. And like those authors, this is easy reading for beach, flight or other times of relaxation. And, like those authors, occasional conflicts include moments of violence and horror, more mature than most young teens may wish to encounter.

This book is full of humor. Including cornball fun. "She's tougher than a dairy cow steak." "I am as fine as a toad's hair." I love those metaphors. If more had been incorporated, I would have smiled a few more times, for sure.

This is a new author for me. And, as he writes prolifically, I intend to read more.

Set in the beautiful but harsh desert plains of Wyoming, Wounded exposes the fear, hatred, and intolerance that can permeate this seemingly idyllic setting. John Hunt is a successful African American rancher and horse trainer. He lives with Gus, his aging uncle on a quiet life on a vast and isolated property, they're both affable, thoughtful man who seek to live out their lives in civilized tranquility.

John lost his wife six years ago in a horse riding accident, and has had trouble moving on from her death; and he seems to find some kind of solace in serenity and beauty of the surrounding countryside. John and Gus are remarkably self sufficient, even though they tend to stand out as the only black folk in a predominantly white landscape. This has never really bothered John, who over the years has garnered the respect of everyone in the nearby town.

When the young man Wallace Castlebury appears on their doorstep looking for work, John and Gus take him in, getting him to do odd jobs around the property. Soon after, when a young gay man is brutally murdered and Wallace is accused of the crime, John is at best ambivalent about Wallace's involvement - he probably believes that Wallace didn't do it, but he just doesn't want to get involved. He doesn't have much to say to the local sheriff, even when Wallace begs him for help.

The terrible felony leads to a hate crime rally that draws a college age man, David, and his boyfriend Robert, to town. David is the son of Howard, an old college roommate of John's. Howard is uncomfortable with his son's sexual orientation, but he calls and asks Hunt to kind of watch over David if he could. Soon David and John have formed an unlikely bond with John trying to deal with his own feelings about homosexuality as David ends up working on his farm.

But evil is constantly afoot, and more violence is unleashed - a Native American neighbor's cows are slaughtered, and racial slurs are written in blood on the ground. In the same instance, a group of young men are seen wearing neo Nazi paraphernalia driving around town. Could these men somehow be involved with the current crop of hate crimes? As John tries to discover the truth, he must deal uneasily with his old friend Howard, his feelings towards Robert, and the burgeoning romance with a younger woman named Maggie, whose mother has recently passed away.

As the drama unfolds, circumstance unexpectedly connects the characters lives. Robert is drawn to John, developing an adolescent crush on him, while John; haunted by his wife's death is beginning to discover through Morgan the ability to love again. But faced point blank, with hatred and intolerance, John and Robert are ultimately bound by their actions, their friendship deepening with the desperation of their endeavors.

John, while trying to help each and every one, is desperately searching for himself, and for a way to get beyond his own past. He finds a solitary cave where he can be at peace with his thoughts, "what I liked about the cave and perhaps any cave, the idea of a cave was the place where light from the outside ceased to have any influence." John is plagued with worry; about Gas getting sick, about getting thrown from a horse, about the uncomfortable feeling he has towards David's sexual orientation, and about the bad snowstorms, that seem to develop at a moments notice.

Author, Percival Everett draws the reader into this drama just as John carefully breaks in his horse, the story is as primitive as the land, transporting the reader to a vast and chilling landscape, where the usual social rules don't apply and where "frontier law" is often de rigor. The action takes place against the remote and wild winter, the red desert, red in the midday light, just like its name implied, stretching out forever. For John "it was the land for me and maybe what the land did to some who lived on it."

Our embattled protagonist is all but overwhelmed by the moral and social forces that have polluted his peaceful environment, his internal struggles a reflection of the turbulent life and landscape of the American West. This is a country where abrupt, extreme, and inexplicable violence preys on man and beast alike, regardless of race, age, or sexual orientation. And when violence strikes, it strikes not just at one of us, but also at us all. Mike Leonard August 05.

Percival Everett never writes the same book twice; in fact, he rarely even writes two books in the same genre, and his publishers seem nonplussed about how to market his fiction. If you were to pigeonhole this particular book somehow, I suppose you'd say it belongs to modern Western crime realism (or something), but it pulls its subject matter right out of the headlines--in this case, the Matthew Shepard murder.

Yet Wyoming's infamous incident is merely a point of departure for a novel that explores the interactions and foibles of its myriad characters as much as it examines the effects of bigotry. John Hunt, the area's only black ranch-owner and a widower who had lost his wife to a freak accident, finds himself playing host to the son of a friend, a gay college student who has arrived in town to protest the murder. While he deals with his unexpected guest (and, initially, with the young man's insufferable boyfriend), John also ham-handedly courts a nearby woman-friend, provides shelter for a three-legged coyote pup he rescued in the brush, clashes with a couple of local neo-Nazi skinheads, attempts to track down whoever is killing a neighbor's cows, and reconsiders what he thinks about some of his fair-weather friends.

The subject matter might seem a bit heavy, but Everett breaks up the tension with the comic behavior of an ornery mule and the characters' often wry, sometimes hilarious barnyard banter, usually between plain-speaking John and his world-weary uncle, Gus. ("We're not having a funeral for a leg," John tells his uncle when the latter questions the propriety of throwing the coyote's amputated limb in the trash.)

In its tone, as well as its trajectory from lightheartedness to solemnity, this powerful, elegant novel is reminiscent of Everett's Western satire, "God's Country." Yet, here, the uncomfortable themes all but necessitate the book's shocking and unexpected finale. "Wounded" is the story of one man's love for and dedication to his friends and family, but in the end it's really a book about hate.

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