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It's 1873 in the burgeoning frontier town of Cottonwood, Kansas. Cottonwood is a town where the men are men, and so are most of the women. Bill Ogden is the town's bartender and photographer. He also has a farm, a wife, and a son just outside town, but spends as little time there as possible. He's not cut out to be a farmer and he's unhappy about his wife sleeping with the hired help, and just about any other man who happens to drop by. Strictly speaking, he's not that unhappy about her sleeping around -- he just wishes she'd do it more discreetly. He's not too concerned about missing his wife's dubious charms, since there seems to be a supply of warm beds he can jump in and out of and, if all else fails, there's always the blacksmith's loft to sleep in. Rich Chicagoan Marc Leval and his lovely wife Maggie have decided that Cottonwood is going to be the place where it's all happening once the railroad comes to town and have decided to get in at the bottom. Leval sees Bill as someone who can help him take Cottonwood from being a one-horse town to being an important cattle town, and persuades Bill to come on board as his partner. Bill is tempted -- both by the idea of building a new saloon without holes in the walls, and by the lovely Maggie. As the town grows, so does the amount of sin and crime (and, heaven knows, it was never a sinless town to start off with). The advent of men and money brings with it the seedier side of life. Cottonwood is a frontier town where nothing is done in half measure -- sex, drinking and killin' those as needs killin' (and a good few who don't) are the main pastimes for the town's bawdy, brash and brazen residents. And in the midst of all the normal sorts of sin, solitary travellers seem to be disappearing, never to be heard from again. Is there a serial killer at loose in Cottonwood? COTTONWOOD is a look at a Wild West which is not heroic or noble, and there are no saviours with a shiny sheriff's badge riding into town on a white horse. It's base and earthy and darkly comic. It's not so much Little House on The Prairie as Little Whore House On The Prairie. And that nice Charles Ingalls and his family have been forced out of town by the likes of Jack Elam and Walter Brennan. Bill Ogden is a charming, if highly-sexed, protagonist. I'm surprised he has enough time and energy to hold down a job, let alone keep up his Greek and Latin studies given the amount of sex he has. Despite the charm of Bill, and the wonderful humour that infuses the book, there's a core of darkness and evil running through it. This is a wonderfully-written book mixing crime fiction, western and true crime. It has some great descriptions, a lot of interesting history which is told in a natural, entertaining way, and some beautiful writing. One scene in particular will stay with me. An excellent read.
Reviewed by Donna Moore, June 2004
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