Refugio, They Named You Wrong

Pete Jackson, a trail boss who herds horses and cattle just south of the Rio Grande, can't go home again. It's 1884, and Jackson (born Costello) is wanted dead or alive in Texas for the double murder of his father and brother, Mick. But in fact, Jackson killed his father in a blind fury after the latter brutally murdered Mick. With a cow-thief girlfriend who dresses as a man, a half-Apache riding partner, a strong-willed Mexican mistress, black buddies and a troubled heart beating beneath his flint exterior, Jackson, a desperado navigating the Tex-Mex border, breathes startling new life into the figure of the lonesome cowboy as rugged individualist. Tinged with prairie-hardened lyricism, this literate, earthy western shakes the genre by its horns, transforming Wild West myths with keen psychological realism. (Apr.)