It’s unavoidable (and probably unfair) to compare Wade’s writing to that of Cormac McCarthy, master of the literary western, but readers will be relieved to discover Wade’s prose never devolves into parody he carves out his own territory with sudden and powerful point-of-view leaps and with a convincing pair of strong female characters.
The chapters alternate viewpoint between the hunter and the hunted, and what might otherwise feel like a straight-ahead collision course turns out to present a nice array of switchbacks, detours, and twists. Set at the turn of the twentieth century, when American Indians have gone but their ghosts loom, when horseback remains the preferred mode of travel and revolutionaries harass both sides of the border, two brothers from Longpine, Arizona, set off on a serpentine quest, hunted by a father whose son they killed in a horse robbery gone wrong. In his exciting debut, Wade paints the Southwest in broad and masterful strokes, and his canvas inspires and terrifies as we follow its luckless inhabitants through an unforgiving wilderness.
In these confining times, literature that depicts the wide open spaces of the American Southwest can offer solace and escape, and there’s no better vehicle to take us there than James Wade’s novel, All Things Left Wild.
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