Butch Cassidy the Lost Years

March 18, 2013
Johnstone’s irreverent revisionist western picks up in 1914 with famed outlaw Butch Cassidy, long thought killed in Bolivia, working as a cattle rancher in Texas under the name Jim Strickland. Decades later, Cassidy spins his yarn to a Pinkerton detective who admits to liking “a dramatic moment.” Johnstone is a masterful storyteller, creating a tale that is fanciful and funny, exciting and surprisingly convincing: Butch roams Texas in anonymity until an encounter with a dying rancher gives him a chance to go straight. He keeps a low profile and earns a good reputation until deciding to teach a lesson to a railroad that has covered up a death and cheated the dead man’s widow. After robbing a train, Butch finds that he missed the excitement and action, and thinks his new wild bunch of misfits might rob some more. His involvement with a preacher’s daughter is dangerous enough, but a tenacious Pinkerton detective sets a clever trap that results in a showdown between Cassidy and the law. This is great fun, and Johnstone’s lively, crisp style lets Butch say it best: “The truth was never as good as a legend.” Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House.

May 15, 2013
Legend has it that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid died in Bolivia in 1908. Johnstone and his nephew flesh out a variant theory in which the Kid dies, but Cassidy, as Jim Strickland, shows up in west Texas a few years later. A dying man wills him his ranch if he will kill three rustlers. Strickland promptly dispatches the rustlers and hires on men to run a respectable ranch. But when a railroad worker dies because of company negligence, and officials renege on their responsibility to the widow, Strickland's sympathies kick in. With his new Wild Bunch, he robs several trains, taking care of the widow; then he pays for a new church. Of course, he's romancing the pastor's daughter, Daisy Hatfield, and the question becomes, Will Strickland's deeds catch up with him? The Johnstones offer nothing new about the Butch Cassidy of history; their Butch could be most any tough hombre. But they tell an entertaining story with lots of plot twists, carefully set up for a sequel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)