Paperback, 365 pages
English language
Published Nov. 9, 2005 by Vintage Books.
This novel by the National Book Award-winning author Pete Dexter captures with lean and rugged prose the spirit of the old West. Wild Bill Hickock is getting old, but he can still shoot a shot glass off the head of a bulldog at thirty paces. He's come to the brawling boomtown of Deadwood to do some gambling. Dogging his footsteps are Calamity Jane, who is crazy in love with Bill, and the vicious Sherriff Boone May, who is looking to make a name for himself any way he can. And one day Bill is quietly playing cards, holding aces over eights, and Boone's weasely little friend Jack McCall walks into the bar with a look in his eyes that says kill....
Very entertaining - close to 5 stars. The dialogue is great, at times reminiscent of Beckett. The author was, of course, restricted by the actual events in Deadwood, so I wished that some relationships could persist, but I guess that's the point. As Agnes Lake says, Things don't care how they happen, that's left for us, to care.
