“The Son” by Philipp Meyer
Never would’ve picked up The Son by Philipp
Meyer if it weren’t on this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books. (I know, I know, I write that a lot.) A sweeping saga of a Texas family starting with kidnap by Comanches and ending with oil tycoonery? But I found it hard to put down this 500+ pager. I’d read to the end of a section, intending to stop, then just keep going.
It’s the braiding of three narratives: Eli, the patriarch, who was kidnapped by Comanches as a boy and lived with them for years before becoming a cattle rancher. Peter, his son, never comfortable with how the family got and kept its land and wealth. And Jeannie, Eli’s great grand-daughter, the only one Eli considers worthy to inherit the family business.
There is blood and violence throughout, not just in Eli’s tale. But Peter’s conscience, and Jeanne’s struggle to be taken seriously as a woman in business by peers and her family, kept me equally involved.
March 21st, 2014 at 11:48 am
I read American Rust and like it, didn’t love it but I liked it. This sounds like more fun to me.
Any word on the new website? Best of luck with it. I recently move to a new site, Wordpress. I know they say you can import your old posts, but I wasn’t able to so I’m reprinting the good posts one or two a week. Deleting them from the old blog as I go.
March 22nd, 2014 at 8:31 am
New site/blog is definitely on the way, pending time for me and tech support husband to sit down and walk through putting it together, which is taking way longer than I wish it did! Glad to hear, in a weird way, that the importing didn’t necessarily work. I’ve got something like a decade of old posts on this site, and may just have to let them go if it isn’t easy.
This was a fun read, plus one that challenged assumptions I have about some things, so a win all around, and more so because I hesitated to pick it up. The reading experience reminded me of Lonesome Dove.