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Summary
Summary
From the author of bestselling How to Argue and Win Every Time comes a new classic about two Native American brothers torn apart--a legal thriller, a love story, and a visionary work that examines deeply the values of life and death.
Author Notes
Gerry Spence was born in Wyoming on January 8, 1929. He graduated from the University of Wyoming Law School in 1952. He never lost a criminal case and has not lost a civil case since 1969. After he evaluated what was important to him, he founded Trial Lawyer's College, which trains young lawyers to beat corporate bigshots in the courtroom. He also founded Lawyers and Advocates for Wyoming, which specializes in public interest cases.
He has written more than 15 books including Gunning for Justice, With Justice for None, From Freedom to Slavery, How to Argue and Win Every Time, The Making of a Country Lawyer, O.J.: The Last Word, A Boy's Summer, Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power, and Police State: How America's Cops Get Away with Murder. He also wrote Gerry Spence's Wyoming: The Landscape and the novel Half-Moon and Empty Stars.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Most celebrated for representing Karen Silkwood, trial lawyer Spence has turned to dispensing folksy punditry on Rivera Live and writing nonfiction (How to Argue and Win Every Time). This is his first novel, and it's both a masterful courtroom thriller and a haunting elegy for Native America. No one in Twin Buttes, Wyo., is surprised when "half-breed" Charlie Redtail is charged with the murder of Ronnie Cotler. After all, when he was only 10, Charlie witnessed Cotler joining with local lawmen to murder his father, Joseph, a jobless, alcoholic Arapahoe. Back then, lawyer Abner Hill had unsuccessfully brought a wrongful-death suit against Joseph's killers, and the futility of seeking justice in the "white man's court" has seared the boy's soul. To the dismay of his white mother, Mary, and his twin brother, Billy, Charlie withdraws into Arapahoe culture, becoming a "warrior" on behalf of Spirit Mountain, which locals, headed by Cotler, are seeking to develop. So when Cotler is murdered, Charlie is automatically the prime suspect, even though his white girlfriend, Willow, signs a confession to exonerate him. Once again, Mary calls on Hill, who, despite his love for Charlie (and, undeniably, for Mary), can't fathom a defense that will save Charlie from the gas chamber not even when a "baby-faced, cold-eyed man" named Emmett calmly confesses to the murder. Despite occasional shifts into rhetorical hyperdrive, Spence's style is richly evocative (one lawyer, "pale as blisters," has a voice "as dreary as the mumbling of moles"). Certain subplots are overdeveloped, such as Abner and Mary's thwarted romance and the wrongful-death suit dominating the novel's first third. But the tragedy of Charlie's life as an Arapahoe warrior is rendered memorably, with deep feeling and panoramic insight. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Celebrity lawyer Spence (Give Me Liberty, 1998, etc.) ventures into fiction with this earnest, endless novel of a 1977 Wyoming murder trial whose every tangled root comes in for minute exploration. When he was only a boy, Charlie Redtail saw something no boy should ever see: his Arapahoe father Joseph kicked to death by sheriffs deputies after a disturbance at Ronnie Cotlers saloon. Years later, he looked on as Cotler, still stung by the long-ago romantic defection of Charlies mother to Joseph Redtail, bought the shack Mary Hamilton lived in and threw Charlies mother out in the street when she refused to pay her back rent on her back. Most recently, Charlie had heard his lover Willow Hodges tell how Cotler and an investor in Spirit Mountain, the sacred Arapahoe ground Cotler was arranging to develop, had captured her during her protest against the development and nearly raped her. So when Cotler is shot to death, the law comes looking for Charlie, who promptly infuriates his lawyer, Abner Hill, by signing a confession in order to protect the pregnant Willow (who has meantime confessed to the murder herself in order to protect him). As the case lurches toward trial, conscientious defender Hill, ambitious prosecutor Ava Mueller, martyr-elect Charlie, his twin brother Billy (now a powerful Harvard MBA calling himself William R. Hamilton), and assassin/mystic Emmett Jonesall of them dragging around troubled, endlessly detailed family historiestake turns speechifying about reasonable doubt, the dilemma of being half-white and half-Arapahoe, the morality of state-sanctioned executions, the power of love, and the rhythms of the universe. Fans of Spences nonfiction waiting eagerly for legal pyrotechnics will have to settle for more of the same at trial before hunkering down for a mercilessly overextended epilogue. Luckily, Spence has a lucrative day job he can always go back to. Readers are well-advised to stick to their own.
Library Journal Review
This is the sad chronicle of the Redtails, a part white, part Arapaho family in Twin Buttes, WY. The first third of the story develops the Redtails' rich family history; the remainder details how Charlie Redtail is framed for murder. Throughout, Spence (A Boy's Summer) deftly illustrates the differences between white and Native American cultures; prejudice and bigotry are reflected in bleak places like bars, courtrooms, jails, and funeral parlors. The author's unsentimental writing shows the whites' brutal physical treatment of Native Americans and the horrific disregard for Arapaho culture. Powerful and tragic (but not completely hopeless), the tale chugs along with the usual elements of a criminal trial but slows during a subplot involving an idealistic lawyer's struggle with the meaning of justice. Narrator Jonathan Marosz effectively captures the inflections and music of Native American language in an evocative, sensitive reading. For libraries with strong Native American collections, this is fine; optional or as needed for other public libraries. Douglas C. Lord, Hartford P.L., CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.