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COTTONWOOD
by Scott Phillips
Ballantine Books, February 2004
304 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0345461002


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Cottonwood was built on the frontier in the late 1800s and Bill Ogden was one of the first men who lived in the budding town. An ex-soldier of the Civil War and an unhappy farmer, Bill lives in town, runs the saloon, and does photography. He travels back to his homestead on occasion to check on the wife and son he has left there, but as Bill doesn't want that life and his wife doesn't want to be anything but the wife of a farmer, the separation is agreed upon and unemotional.

Both Bill and his wife find their intimate partners in other places. Bill finds them in town with various willing women and Ninna, his wife, finds solace with the hired hands and any willing man who passes near the farmhouse. There are no real hard feelings between the couple and not many emotions. Bill has some warmth for his son, but mostly it shows itself as a surprise that the boy looks like Bill's father and has a liking for the Greek Classics that Bill himself reads with interest.

The burgeoning town has its cast of frontier characters. There are the usual number of rough men, some wives and women of the evening, and more than a few hard drinkers. One woman in town who has shown an interest in Bill is Kate Bender. Her strange family opens their house to the occasional wayfarer of which an unusual number are never seen again. But as the country is young and wild, most anything could have happened to these lone travelers, not a lot of thought is given to the disappearances ­- though rumors do abound.

When wealthy Marc Leval makes his appearance in Cottonwood, he offers Bill ­ the owner of the saloon and therefore a forefront businessman of the town ­ to join him as a partner. Marc sees Cottonwood as growing in leaps and bounds in the coming years because the railroad is coming with the promise of building cattle pens. That will increase the wealth in that part of the country. Bill is as interested in Marc's money as he is in Maggie, Marc's beautiful and flirtatious wife.

As the town booms the townspeople finally realize that wealthy travelers are dropping off the face of the earth after visiting Cottonwood, and more specifically, after lodging in the Benders' house. Bill, who always felt that something was very wrong with the Benders, is among the men to investigate their farmhouse.

This part of the book is based on the true crime story of the 'Bloody Benders', a murderous family in the Kansas of that time period.

Author Scott Phillips does a wonderful job in recreating the Wild, Old West. His descriptions of the town and the people living and struggling to live there are vivid and clear -­ very like the best of Bill's photographs of the area. But like the staged photographs of the time, when people and things had to remain still for a long time in order to get the image on the early equipment, most of this story hits you the same way that looking through a book of the old photographs would. Although you can get a realistic picture of the time, there's very little human emotion showing.

Just as the way Bill runs out to get photos of the worst of the after-effects of the more violent moments in the town, it's all rather quiet. There's almost no bonding with the subjects of the story. Bill wanders in and around the west, making and breaking relationships, and although there are terrible results and natural forces abounding (including one of those famous Kansas tornadoes), there is very little passion here to make you feel for the people or the place.

Scott Phillips does a great job with the backdrop of this book, but ultimately COTTONWOOD leaves you feeling at a distance from the people and the action. Read this for the history, but as for the romance, or the mystery, or emotions you might want in a story, you won't find them here.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, December 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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