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Searching... Salem Main Library | Albert, B. | Searching... Unknown |
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Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Though mute, Meyer Liebermann, the narrator of Albert's second novel (following Desert Blues), gives voice to a rip-roaring saga about the waning days of the Old West. In 1898, 11-year-old Meyer, on the run from his New York family, winds up hiding out as a stowaway with ``Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and Congress of Rough Riders of the World.'' Through the next eight years and six aliases, Meyer wanders without much direction from one western adventure to the next, earning his keep as an errand boy and letter writer, plying his trade in saloons, mining camps and bordellos. From Buffalo Bill to Wobblie leader Big Bill Haywood, from bomber Harry Orchard to Pinkerton detective James McParland, the famous and the infamous somehow manage to track across the young man's path. From the show-business antics of Calamity Jane to the strike-breaking violence at the Colorado and Idaho coal mines, Meyer watches America changing from the freedom of the frontier to union-busting capitalism, corporate corruption and political skulduggery. The narrator finally ends up in prison, wrongfully charged as an accomplice to a political assassination, until matters are set aright through a rescue that most readers will greet with raised eyebrows. But that's okay, for as Meyer's mother once told him, ``It is the story that matters, Meyer... not the details''-and this yarn is a keeper. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An over-peopled, over-subplotted second novel from the author of Desert Blues (1994), this set in the turn-of-the-century American West. It's 1906 when 11-year-old Meyer Liebermann--shocked at learning that he's adopted and that his natural mother was one of the ``Division Street Jews,'' the dregs of Europe--experiences a crisis of identity and runs away from his wealthy New York home. Then, his larynx crushed in a mugging by a Jewish street gang, Meyer is left for dead outside Madison Square Garden, where he's found by Sunset Buffalo Dreamer, a Sioux member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Now a mute, the young Meyer is informally adopted by the Sioux and given the first of his many new names. His symbolic rebirth reflects Albert's theme that Americans constantly reinvent themselves and that with each new identity comes a new story. This promising idea, however, is smothered by too many stories: Buffalo Bill and the passing of the Wild West; Big Bill Haywood and the Wobblies; May Arkwright Hutton and women's suffrage; the temperance movement; the Indians' loss of sovereignty; racial prejudice; judicial corruption; the plight of prostitutes. Meyer frequently compares himself with Twain's Huckleberry Finn, but Huck's journey ultimately had a purpose: to free Jim and confront his own prejudice. This young man's journey across the West seems to have no purpose, except perhaps to provide an Old West adventure. Even his involvement with Bill Haywood's efforts to unionize Colorado's miners is more accidental than purposeful, though the account is so choked with minor characters named but not introduced, and so confused with the tag ends of other subplots, that it's unlikely the reader will notice. Accurate historical research and occasional humor fail to compensate for a lack of focus and an overabundance of sheer subject.
Booklist Review
When we first meet Meyer Lieberman, he's sitting in an Idaho jail, accused of murder. Meyer, a mute, begins to write out his life story. It begins in New York in 1887 where, as the adopted son of a prosperous Jewish family, he consistently disappoints his parents. After running away from home, he is assaulted on the street and left mute by his assailants, only to be nursed back to health by the Indians of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Soon he's on the road with his new family, earning his keep by writing letters for Buffalo Bill. It's Meyer's penchant for writing stories that keeps him immersed in trouble and then extricates him from it. This is a western novel with the most unique protagonist one is ever likely to encounter. Meyer is funny, self-aware, courageous, compassionate, and in his own fashion, tough as nails. He survives a harsh land via his wits and his single skill--letter writing--which proves to be every bit as useful (and a hell of a lot more interesting) than a quick draw and a sharp aim. Western fans expecting standard "six-gun justice" will be pleasantly surprised. --Wes Lukowsky