Ride South to Purgatory by James C. Work (review)

BOOK REVIEW S 1 9 5 of Korea, she seems all too ready to represent its culture as an insider and to condemn it based on her mythic imagination. Kim is much more effective when she describes racial and sexual discrimi­ nation in school, church, and the society at large in both Korea and America. Rather than writing a litany of social ills resulting from such discrimination, she focuses on its devastating impact on her individual psychology. Seedsfrom a Silent Tree, a collection of essays from Korean children adopted into American homes, has given us a glimpse of their lives. Heinz Insu Fenkl depicted a bi-racial child­ hood in Korea in his Memories of My Ghost Brother. Despite its flaws, Kim’s unflinching account adds to our understanding of how the history of the Korean War and the political relationship between Korea and America helped shape the lives of children negotiating between Korean and American identities. Ride South to Purgatory. By James C. Work. Unity, Maine: Five Star Western, 1999. 254 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by D elbert E. Wylder Temple, Texas A t the beginning of this award-deserving novel, we learn that the protag­ onist, a cowboy named Pasque, has returned to his Uncle Art’s ranch after try­ ing to arrange the sale of some horses to the army. While he’s been gone, two important events have taken place. His Uncle Art has married a young and beautiful lady named Gwen, and second, Art has hired two Kansas cowhands, one of them named Link, who possess some equipment with the same brand as that on the horses of the rustlers who had killed Pasque’s brothers. It should also be noted that years earlier Art had gained half-interest in this ranch, the Keystone, by pulling out a deeply embedded axe from a tree stump. No other cowboy had been able to do it. Art managed the ranch wisely and well, and the original owners left the other half to him in their will. Over the years, Art established a reputation for honest dealing, and the Keystone had become the center of culture and hospitality throughout the region. During an especially elaborate version of the Keystone’s traditional Christmas party, with the area’s ranchers, cowboys, and their ladies gathered in the great dining hall, the doors were opened and a massive man wearing a green bandana over his lower face, and a heavy buffalo coat, rode inside on an equally massive horse. In a loud voice he challenged Art, or any of the Keystone cowboys, to defend the ranch’s reputation for honor and bravery by playing a deadly game. He would allow a cowboy to shoot at him at close range three times with a heavy pistol. If the cowboy failed to kill him and he escaped, then the cowboy would be honor bound to seek him out by the next Christmas and allow the giant three shots. In order to protect Uncle Art’s life, and the honor of Keystone, Pasque accepts the challenge. He takes three shots— and misses. Does this ring a bell? More than that: the borrowing from Arthurian 1 9 6 WAL 3 6 .1 S U M M E R 2 0 0 1 legends and Sir Gawain should sound in the mind like the end of Tchaikovsky’s “ 1812 Overture.” But that’s not all. There’s the other plot dealing with Pasque’s desire for revenge against the murderers of his brothers. The heroes of both the Arthurian myth and the Western cowboy myth are formulaic and, though different in some respects, are similar in others. Each formula requires a dangerous journey into unknown territory. The dangers con­ tinue in this relatively strange environment, but the hero, obviously, must sur­ vive and return to his homeland victoriously, bringing with him new knowl­ edge or something more tangible. James C. Work is not only a scholar of western American and other liter­ atures, but an accomplished editor and essayist. Ride South to Purgatory is his first foray into the Western novel, and it is indeed a success. Work has used his knowledge of the Old West...