The
extensive subtitle on the cover of Roger D. Hodge’s book reads:
“Seven Generations Among the Outlaws, Ranchers, Indians,
Missionaries, Soldiers and Smugglers of the Borderlands.”
The
title, “Texas Blood,” refers to family, bloodline, Hodge’s
ancestors, but also, as the subtitle suggests, the wide-ranging
topics covered in this fascinating Texas story.
Hodge
is something of an expert on Cormac McCarthy. He is also a fan of the
novelist and asserts that those novels, known for their graphic
scenes, are close to the reality that he perceived during his time in
Texas.
The
violent history of this place in a bygone frontier era is
well-documented and accepted as a product of a brand of lawlessness
that figures fully here.
Hodge
left Texas at the age of 18 and believed his departure could be for
good. A former editor of Harper’s magazine, author of “The
Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American
Liberalism,” he lives in Brooklyn now and is the deputy editor of
The Intercept magazine.
Hodge
does, in fact, return to the state by way of this work of nonfiction.
He revisits his roots and tells the wild stories of things he
experienced working on a ranch.
He contextualizes the experiences by
way of the stories of his ancestors in Texas, and also in Oklahoma
and Arizona, but the main setting of the book is Texas — big,
complex, idiosyncratic Texas.
Hodge’s
history starts in the 1800s, years before the 1848 signing of the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S./Mexican war and
added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States, including
the land that makes up all or parts of present-day Arizona,
California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The
long span of centuries here isn’t covered chronologically. We learn
about the seven generations of the author’s family — Wilsons,
Adamsons, Kirks and Hodges — and move back and forth along a
timeline and all over the state.
Read the original book review on: http://www.mysanantonio.com
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