by Andrew Hedglin
On the back of the beautifully-bound El Paso by Winston Groom, you see a list of historical personages promised to star in the book, laid out like a star-studded movie poster: Pancho Villa…Tom Mix…Ambrose Bierce…George Patton. These historical cameos add rich color to the book, but the real star is a character of Groom’s own imagining: Arthur Shaughnessy Jr.
Arthur is the adopted son of a fading railroad tycoon. His father has some very Theodore Roosevelt-esque ideas about manliness, but Arthur seems to keep disappointing him. Although Arthur is studious and good at managing what is left of their business, he can’t match his father’s temperament and interests. Whereas his father is impulsive, Arthur likes to plan. Instead of hunting for big game on African safaris, Arthur prefers to hunt for butterflies for his collection. Instead of riding around in trains (the family business!), he is fascinated by the new field of aviation.
When the Mexican Revolution begins to threaten the Shaughnessy holdings in Chihuahua, Shaughnessy Sr. decides to go down there to see how things are going for himself. However, he also decides to bring his whole family. While both Arthurs are away on a desperate cattle drive, the tycoon’s grandchildren, Katherine and Timmy, are kidnapped by Pancho Villa’s army and held for ransom.
Arthur, the son, must make a passage of his own, literally through the Sierra Madres as he and his impromptu band hunt for the famed bandit general, and metaphorically as he becomes the masculine paragon of a hero that his father always wanted him to be.
This feels like just the bare bones of the story. I don’t have space to tell you about the matador Johnny Ollas searching for his lost love, or the journalists Ambrose Bierce and John Reed trading barbs and philosophies as they travel with Villa, or Mix finding out the price of fame. This book is loaded with characters and plot, but moves along swiftly and breathlessly. It’s full of improbable coincidences and historical cameos (a trademark of Groom, author of Forrest Gump), without feeling corny or eye-rolling. The book is a delicate balancing act, passing between the U.S. and Mexico, city and wilderness, and even the boundaries of fact and fiction themselves.
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