Castle Garden

Though mute, Meyer Liebermann, the narrator of Albert's second novel (following Desert Blues), gives voice to a rip-roaring saga about the waning days of the Old West. In 1898, 11-year-old Meyer, on the run from his New York family, winds up hiding out as a stowaway with ``Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and Congress of Rough Riders of the World.'' Through the next eight years and six aliases, Meyer wanders without much direction from one western adventure to the next, earning his keep as an errand boy and letter writer, plying his trade in saloons, mining camps and bordellos. From Buffalo Bill to Wobblie leader Big Bill Haywood, from bomber Harry Orchard to Pinkerton detective James McParland, the famous and the infamous somehow manage to track across the young man's path. From the show-business antics of Calamity Jane to the strike-breaking violence at the Colorado and Idaho coal mines, Meyer watches America changing from the freedom of the frontier to union-busting capitalism, corporate corruption and political skulduggery. The narrator finally ends up in prison, wrongfully charged as an accomplice to a political assassination, until matters are set aright through a rescue that most readers will greet with raised eyebrows. But that's okay, for as Meyer's mother once told him, ``It is the story that matters, Meyer... not the details''-and this yarn is a keeper. (Feb.)