All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone

In Jacobson’s rollicking debut, a young Texas cowboy heads overseas at the turn of the 20th century. Lincoln Smith, son of a legendary Texas Ranger and Vassar-educated mother, performs in a traveling Wild West show in 1899 after his expulsion from Dartmouth, where he was decidedly out of step with his peers. After the show folds and Lincoln’s girlfriend ditches him, he joins the French Foreign Legion and makes his way to the Middle Eastern kingdom of Mur. Along the way, he meets two American treasure hunters who also plan to enlist. While he’s there, Mur is under attack by dervishes worshipping the crocodile god, Thanatos, though this is just a feint for a covert German attempt to wrest control of the oil-rich kingdom away from the French. To fight the dervish-German alliance, Lincoln and the two American enlistees team up with Amanda Montier, the French ambassador’s kidnapped daughter; Omar, a plucky Arab teenager raised on western dime novels; and three Legionnaires known as Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Armed with only his wits, big heart and his father’s keepsake Winchester, Lincoln is an old-fashioned hero worth rooting for. Jacobson ingeniously colors in Lincoln’s adventures with elements of Dumas, Jules Verne, and P.C. Wren’s Beau Geste mixed with much Indiana Jones–style derring-do. This is a ride worth taking. (Feb.)