cover image Chasing Uncle Charley

Chasing Uncle Charley

Cruce Stark. Southern Methodist University Press, $19.95 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-87074-333-7

Chasing Uncle Charley is exactly what Bo Johnson does from beginning to end in this wry, highly entertaining first novel set in the postbellum Southwest. After killing the town villain and shooting a second man, Charley lights out of his East Texas home and heads for Indian Territoryper book . After a time, 17-year-old Bo is dispatched to tell Charley that he didn't kill the second man after all and that he's welcome back. Like a frontier Candide, Bo sets out cheerfully, despite the obvious difficulty of locating a fugitive in the vast, mysterious expanse of the Territory. Everyone he encounters on his quest seems to know Uncle Charley, but they will give only enigmatic clues to his whereabouts. As the title suggests, however, finding Uncle Charley isn't really the point. Charley is both the story's raison d'etre and the incarnation of something larger than the characters associated with him: he's that elusive goal just beyond our grasp. Bo's hunt, meanwhile, occasions his passage into adulthood and his discovery of the meaning of home, all with the help of an offbeat cast (featuring a disreputable circuit-riding preacher, the prostitute he pimps for and an Indian cowboy who went to Harvard). Big and broad as the land Bo traverses on his quixotic ride, this novel nods at the humor of Twain. (July)