Backlands--A Novel of the American West

May 12, 2014
McGarrity's hefty middle title is part of the trilogy set in the American West, after Hard Country. Emma Kerney, dying from a bad heart, lives in the frontier town of La Cruces, New Mexico, with her eight-year-old son Matthew during the 1920s. Divorced from her "backlandsâ rancher husband, Patrick, for spousal rape, she arranges a substantial trust plan administered by the town banker Henry Bowman and lawyer Wallace Claiborne Hale to provide for Matthew after her demise. Patrick (aka "Pat Floydâ) has a checkered past as an inmate at Yuma Prison, though the Arizona territorial governor later grants him a pardon. He also serves with military distinction as a member of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, but after Emma dies and leaves Patrick as the sole guardian, he is less successful at establishing strong emotional bonds with Matthew. Headstrong father and son quarrel over whether Matthew should stay to work on the Kerney ranch or leave to continue his high school and college education. Matthew goes on to have an ill-fated romance with Beth Mertonâwho is stricken with tuberculosisâwhile the Great Depression leaves him in dire financial straits to gut it out and survive the bad times. By the time the Second World War breaks out, Matthew feels as if he is ready to make several life-altering decisions. McGarrity's narrative is picturesque and enjoyable, and sets the stage for the trilogy's final installment.

May 15, 2014
McGarrity's first Kevin Kerney mystery, Tularosa (1996), took the Santa Fe policeman back to the New Mexico ranch where he grew up. In 2012, McGarrity turned from mysteries to historical fiction with Hard Country, the first of a trilogy concerning Kerney's ancestors. Now, in the second volume in the series, the family saga moves from the 1920s through WWII, focusing on Kerney's grandfather Patrick and father, Matthew; their troubled relationship; and their ongoing struggle to manage the family ranch in the unforgiving, treacherous mountains and desert of southern New Mexico. McGarrity writes about the landscape of the American southwest with loving detail and rough-hewn eloquence, but he is equally good here with the human stories and the historical backdropthe Depression, daily life in the water-starved high desert, and the fascinating story of the WPA's Civilian Conservation Corps, a favorite program of FDR's that brought jobs to the desert and to Matthew. Through it all, though, the story of a hard-bitten father and a son forced into adulthood before his timeof loves lost, droughts endured, obstacles overcomeclaims our emotions much in the manner of Ivan Doig's similarly heartfelt historical fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)