Literary Historical Fiction / LGBT Friendly
Date Published: 07-16-2025
Thomas Anderson of Literary Titan calls The Ballad of Midnight and McRae "wildly entertaining" and recommends it "to lovers of literary fiction, fans of Cormac McCarthy or Marilynne Robinson, and anyone who believes that stories still have the power to save."
Poet Malcolm Guite writes, "In the story of Midnight and McRae we are enabled to hear the long conversation between Pagan and Christian, and within Christianity between protestant and catholic. and on a personal level between father and son, between lover and beloved, and deep within ourselves, the conversation between the person we are pretending to be and the person we really are. And all these vital conversations are enfolded in and arise from a compelling story set on the frontiers, the badlands, and the formative days of America itself, the place where so many of these conversations need to take place."
—Thomas Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Literary Titan
My father was one of the last great lawmen of the Wild West.
His name was Caleb McRae. He was born in 1878, a fair-haired child with eyes the clear cold blue of a mountain lake. The son of a Broad Street banker, he grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut on a sprawling estate, yet cared nothin for money or the shiny thin s it can buy.
Justice was his only passion.
He thrilled to read of Revelation’s hundred-pound hailstones raining down on sinners and devoured dime novels that told tales of the Texas Rangers. In his imagination it was he who collared John Wesley Hardin, the murderous outlaw, and Sam Bass, robber of coaches and trains.
As a young boy he learned to ride. He bought a six shooter when he turned thirteen and taught himself to blast tin cans off fence posts at fifty paces. He chopped cords of wood to build the muscles in his arms, and by 1fteen was broad-shouldered and an inch over six feet tall. At seventeen he left his family’s Presbyterian church and became a Baptist, blithely ignoring his father’s stern warnings not to evangelize on the streets of downtown Greenwich.
One secret tormented him: he had no desire for girls and found his gaze lingering on other boys. Might he, of all people, be a pansy, a fairy, an affront to the Living God? No, impossible, the Lord must be testing his righteousness. All right, then; Caleb would not let Him down. And so, in a solitary ceremony late one midsummer’s eve, he knelt before a cross he’d fashioned from old railroad ties and vowed to renounce his sinful thoughts and wayward dreams.
In his eighteenth year he set out for the Lone Star State, delighted that his parents had cut him off without a dime. How much easier it would be to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
He made his way to Austin, convinced the Rangers to let him sign on, and two years later was sent to the brawling boomtown of El Paso. The railroad had brought prosperity, and with it came gunfighters, gamblers, con artists, and thieves. Few lawmen lasted long.
For my father, it was perfect.
I keep a newspaper clipping on my writing desk, a black-and-white photograph that appeared in the El Paso Herald in December of 1898. Though its ostensible subject is a certain Mayor Magoffin, my father’s hulking image dominates the frame. He’s the only clean-shaven man in the picture, and his hair, while not long , is a leonine mass of what must have been olden curls. There’s a broad-brimmed Stetson in his left hand and a Winchester rifle in his right. He’s wearing an oilskin duster and has an air of re al authority that belies his twenty-two years.
Caleb McRae was fierce and fair and never backed down, and in a few short years led the taming of El Faso. By the turn of the century, his life had become routine. He put away garden-variety bad guys, became the youngest Elder of the First Baptist Church, and prayed for the chance to do somethin great for the Glory of God.
About the Author
No comments:
Post a Comment