Synopsis
Chronicles the adventures of Mirabeau Lamar "Bo" Johnson in the post-Civil War West as he searches for his elusive "Uncle" Charlie--a former schoolteacher on the run after he mistakenly thinks he killed someone
Reviews
Chasing Uncle Charley is exactly what Bo Johnson does from beginning to end in this wry, highly entertaining first novel set in the postbellum Southwest. After killing the town villain and shooting a second man, Charley lights out of his East Texas home and heads for Indian Territoryper book . After a time, 17-year-old Bo is dispatched to tell Charley that he didn't kill the second man after all and that he's welcome back. Like a frontier Candide, Bo sets out cheerfully, despite the obvious difficulty of locating a fugitive in the vast, mysterious expanse of the Territory. Everyone he encounters on his quest seems to know Uncle Charley, but they will give only enigmatic clues to his whereabouts. As the title suggests, however, finding Uncle Charley isn't really the point. Charley is both the story's raison d'etre and the incarnation of something larger than the characters associated with him: he's that elusive goal just beyond our grasp. Bo's hunt, meanwhile, occasions his passage into adulthood and his discovery of the meaning of home, all with the help of an offbeat cast (featuring a disreputable circuit-riding preacher, the prostitute he pimps for and an Indian cowboy who went to Harvard). Big and broad as the land Bo traverses on his quixotic ride, this novel nods at the humor of Twain.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Picaresque first novel that follows 17-year-old Bo around Texas, Mexico, and Indian Territory as he searches for Uncle Charley. Uncle Charley leaves town after shooting a man, thinking he's a murderer, before learning that the victim was barely wounded. Bo, picked to track down Charley and tell him he can return, sets off and is passed from hand to hand, usually by people who have seen Charley but are reluctant to discuss his whereabouts. Bo sojourns here and there, first with a farm family, whose daughter he falls in love with, then with the Preacher, who uses his insight into human nature not to spread the Gospel but to relieve gamblers of their money. The Preacher serves as an informal probation officer for a young outlaw, Jeremiah, who begins educating Bo in the ways of the world. When Bo discovers that everyone around the table is cheating at poker, Jeremiah explains that if everybody is cheating, then no one is. Meanwhile, Sam, the local prostitute, relieves Bo of his virginity so he can ``get to the other side,'' and, through hilarious circumstances, he ends up with Flake, a partly scalped Ranger who shows him how to protect himself from Indian arrows--by filling his clothes with pecans. By the time Bo arrives at the Butters, a family living in the middle of ``The Thicket,'' he's hearing the voices of many but is eventually forced to make his own decisions. The reader, however, is left with numerous loose threads and a flat ending. Fast-moving and readable throughout, though the second half loses some of its charm and ingenuity. Homespun wisdom becomes philosophy or mysticism and the characters seem too much like literary devices. If both halves matched, it'd be a winner. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Set in the Texas of the Old West, this coming-of-age tale follows 17-year-old Bo Johnson on a journey from his hometown in eastern Texas to find his Uncle Charley, who years before had shot two people and subsequently fled to the frontier. Bo encounters a string of unusual characters--caricatures really, from the preacher who is a gambling pimp to the Harvard-educated Indian Bobby Joe. The storyline at times runs to the metaphysical and bizarre, but young adults and fans of Westerns will find something appealing in this first novel about a young man's initiation.
- C. Christopher Pavek, National Economic Research Assocs. Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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