Benediction

Dufault’s unremarkable debut explores the life of early-20th-century Canadian artist and cowboy Will James, born Ernest Dufault, a relative of the author. Dufault begins with Will as a teenage immigrant in the U.S., who has joined up with cowboys near the Great Basin in 1911, pretending to enjoy the taste of prairie oysters to fit in. Three years later, Will runs into fellow itinerant cowboy Lew Hackberry, who persuades him to steal some branded cattle they find loose on the prairie. Will and Lew separate, and after Will is caught by a sheriff, he cooperates in exchange for a promise of leniency, yet spends two years in a Nevada prison. There, he cultivates his talent for drawing and is sustained by letters and postcards from family. And after his release, he has a series of adventures in and around Carson City. Dufault’s meandering portrait is hindered by cloying prose (“They’d felt his generosity, knew it to be intact and precious, something the prison staff had lost years ago. Will James was one of a kind”), though an afterword from Strauss evokes the “deceptively polished” charm of James’s original writings, which landed him the 1927 Newbery Medal. Still, Dufault’s middling effort fails to show why James merited a novel. (Mar.)