cover image Devil on the Wall

Devil on the Wall

James W. Burke. McLennan House, Incorporated, $14.95 (324pp) ISBN 978-0-918865-09-0

It's March 6, 1836, and Gen. Antonio Lopes de Santa Anna, in command of some 5000 soldiers, has bottled up a hundred-odd Yankee rebels in the old Alamo Mission. Most prominent among the defenders are famed knife fighter Jim Bowie and frontier hero and former Congressman David Crockett. By the end of the day's fighting, nearly all of the old mission's inhabitants are dead. The passions inspired by the massacre play an incalculable role in the war in which the U.S. wrested Texas from the Mexicans. Burke revives a dark and bloody era in our history, based on the intertwined times of Crockett, Bowie, Santa Anna and the Anglo colonist commander in the Alamo, William Barrett Travis. This rip-roaring historical novel is populated with heroes and villains and nothing much in between. Texas chauvinists will probably love it, but other readers are likely to find it all too pat. (August)