The Day the Cisco Kid Shot John Wayne by Nash Candelaria (review)

68 Western American Literature baby and an Indian mesmerist who mercifully induces a trance in a warrior who is being tortured to death. Stewart renders an essentially romantic plot in a labored prose and with an astonishing proclivity for the trivial and anticlimactic. This novel has been republished not for its fictional but for its historical values, as the present editor’s helpful annotations attest. Stewart’s vivid, authentic descriptions of actual mountain men, landmarks, and events often transcend his otherwise turgid prose. One knows that Stewart himself has tasted the exhilaration his protagonist experiences while chasing buffalo amidst “the thunder of so many thousand feet over the hollow sounding prairie—the ominous look, and threatening approach of those on whom I pressed, the bewilderment of being carried along in the cloud of monsters and a whirlwind of dust” (84). One knows, too, that Stewart’sportrait of Bill Williams isdrawn from real life: the mountain man’s leather pants “were lustrous with the fat of many seasons ... ;an old black beaver covered the head, and through a hole in the crown, obtruded a mass of bright red hair seasoned with white; the features were small and intelligent, the eye of a rich blue was restless and eager, and both hands and face were covered with freckles, bony and dirty . . .” (95). Such details make this novel a valuable primary source for the history of the mountain man. LEVI S. PETERSON Weber State College The Day the Cisco Kid Shot John Wayne. By Nash Candelaria. (Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press, 1988. 172 pages, $10.00.) Despite the title, Nash Candelaria’s latest collection of short stories has little to do with the traditional West generally associated with the name of John Wayne. These tales are, more accurately, southwestern in tone since they explore the changing relationships among Hispanic characters in various settings in New Mexico. Candelaria has a fine hand for drawing seemingly insignificant characters in significantly human and revealing situations. The author of Memories of the Alhambra, Not by the Sword, and Inheritance of Stranger is particularly sensitive in his portrayal of young boys in conflict with parents or other rela­ tives. In the title story, the young narrator experiences, and overcomes, the racism of his friends, Los Indios, after they declare war on an Okie kid whom they nickname John Wayne, alias the enemy. The twelve stories included in this collection provide an unusually percep­ tive picture of family relationships, especially the inter-generational and inter­ racial misunderstandings which are commonplace between Hispanics and Reviews 69 Anglos. Candelaria revealed his sympathetic understanding of these themes in his early novel, Memories of the Alhambra, but his short stories are especially successful in their probing of human emotions and vulnerability. There is joy and hope and endurance in his characters, too, and these positive values are often contrasted with loneliness and the fear of death, as in “Kissing the Gorilla” and “Affirmative Action.” This latter story is one of the best in the collection, with its touching treatment of the frustrations of old age in the widowed Hispanic grandmother Rosalia. Her discovery of an unexpected ally and kindred spirit in her feisty, Irish granddaughter-in-law gives a refreshingly optimistic twist to the eternal conflict between generations. Candelaria’s continuing concern with generational and ethnic differences is evident in this selection, and his solutions, as in the case of “Affirmative Action,” often make us stop to reconsider our own preconceptions and priori­ ties. Human relationships will always be conflictive, for that is our nature; but Candelaria seems to suggest that they need not be negatively so. If we must shoot our John Waynes, Candelaria shows us how to do so without hurting each other. PATRICIA DE LA FUENTE Pan American University Desperate Measures. By James Hannah. (Dallas: Southern Methodist Uni­ versity Press, 1988. 195 pages, $14.95.) A collection of ten short stories in the Southwest Life and Letters Series, Desperate Measures speaks with urgency about characters in extreme situa­ tions. Although there is no story called “Desperate Measures” in Hannah’s collection, the title theme is dominant. The stories are almost all set in Texas (two show us Texans on journeys out...