Bowie

The softspoken Southern aristocrat best known for king-sized cutlery and his glorious death at the Alamo, Jim Bowie remains a historical enigma surrounded by myth, half-truth and revisionist tinkering. This collaboration (Eickhoff most recently wrote a dark western, The Fourth Horseman, about Doc Holliday) continues the murky Bowie legend in a cacophony of more than 35 narrators who tell of Bowie's life (1796-1836), some recalling different details of the same events as seen from different perspectives and distanced by time. A loyal friend and deadly enemy, Bowie had a checkered career as a partner of slave trader and pirate Jean Lafitte (and was himself involved in suspicious land speculation with alleged forged land titles). Never one to run from a fight or ignore an insult, Bowie killed dozens of men in duels and brawls with Indians, assassins, robbers, bullies and card cheats. Although plagued by scandals and not always popular after a killing, Bowie was a natural leader, a trait that led him to Texas and the Alamo. While one wishes they had made do with fewer narrators, the authors cleverly show both sides of Jim Bowie, the hero and the villain, certainly no common man and no saint, but a true Western legend. (Oct.)