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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel (P.S.) Kindle Edition
By age thirty-four, Jesse James was already one of the most notorious and admired men in America. Bank robber, train bandit, gang leader, killer, and beloved son of Missouri—
James’s many epithets live on in newspapers and novels alike. As his celebrity was reaching its apex, James met Robert Ford, the brother of a James gang member—an awkward, antihero-worshipping twenty-year-old with stars in his eyes. The young man’s fascination with the legend borders on jealous obsession: While Ford wants to ride alongside James as his most-trusted confidant, sharing his spotlight is not enough. As a bond forms between the two men, Ford realizes that the only way he’ll ever be as powerful as his idol is to become him; he must kill James and take his mantle. In the striking novel that inspired the film of the same name starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, bestselling author Ron Hansen retells a classic Wild West story that has long captured the nation’s imagination, and breathes new life into the final days and ignoble death of an iconic American man.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherOpen Road Media
- Publication dateMay 28, 2013
- File size4201 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Retelling the familiar stories, making them fresh, finding in them an unresolvable mystery about fame and ambition in America, this book is a wonderful achievement.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Ron Hansen has turned low history into high art . . . This is a terrific book.” —Newsday
From the Back Cover
Jesse James was a fabled outlaw, a charismatic, spiritual, larger-than-life bad man whose bloody exploits captured the imagination and admiration of a nation hungry for antiheroes. Robert Ford was a young upstart torn between dedicated worship and murderous jealousy, the "dirty little coward" who coveted Jesse's legend. The powerful, strange, and unforgettable story of their interweaving paths—and twin destinies that would collide in a rain of blood and betrayal—is a story of America in all her rough, conflicted glory and the myths that made her.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The
A NovelBy Ron HansenHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright ©2007 Ron HansenAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061120190
Chapter One
September 7th, 1881
His manner was pleasant, though noticeably quiet and reserved. He listened attentively to every word that Scott Moore or I uttered but he himself said little. Occasionally he would ask some question about the country and the opportunities for stock-raising. But all the time I was conscious that he was alertly aware of everything that was said and done in the room. He never made the slightest reference to himself, nor did he show the least trace of self-importance or braggadocio. Had I not known who he was I should have taken him for an ordinary businessman receiving a social visit from two of his friends. But his demeanor was so pleasant and gentlemanly withal that I found myself on the whole liking him immensely.
Miguel Antonio Otero
My Life on the Frontier
He was growing into middle age and was living then in a bungalow on Woodland Avenue. Green weeds split the porch steps, a wasp nest clung to an attic gable, a rope swing looped down from a dying elm tree and the ground below it was scuffed soft as flour. Jesse installed himself in a rocking chair and smoked a cigar down in the evening as his wife wiped her pink hands on a cotton apron and reported happily on their two children. Whenever he walked about the house, he carried several newspapers—the Sedalia Daily Democrat, the St. Joseph Gazette, and the Kansas City Times—with a foot-long .44 caliber pistol tucked into a fold. He stuffed flat pencils into his pockets. He played by flipping peanuts to squirrels. He braided yellow dandelions into his wife?s yellow hair. He practiced out-of-the-body travel, precognition, sorcery. He sucked raw egg yolks out of their shells and ate grass when sick, like a dog. He would flop open the limp Holy Bible that had belonged to his father, the late Reverend Robert S. James, and would contemplate whichever verses he chanced upon, getting privileged messages from each. The pages were scribbled over with penciled comments and interpretations; the cover was cool to his cheek as a shovel. He scoured for nightcrawlers after earth-battering rains and flipped them into manure pails until he could chop them into writhing sections and sprinkle them over his garden patch. He recorded sales and trends at the stock exchange but squandered much of his capital on madcap speculation. He conjectured about foreign relations, justified himself with indignant letters, derided Eastern financiers, seeded tobacco shops and saloons with preposterous gossip about the kitchens of Persia, the Queen of England, the marriage rites of the Latter Day Saints. He was a faulty judge of character, a prevaricator, a child at heart. He went everywhere unrecognized and lunched with Kansas City shopkeepers and merchants, calling himself a cattleman or commodities investor, someone rich and leisured who had the common touch.
He was born Jesse Woodson James on September 5th, 1847, and was named after his mother?s brother, a man who committed suicide. He stood five feet eight inches tall, weighed one hundred fifty-five pounds, and was vain about his physique. Each afternoon he exercised with weighted yellow pins in his barn, his back bare, his suspenders down, two holsters crossed and slung low. He bent horseshoes, he lifted a surrey twenty times from a squat, he chopped wood until it pulverized, he drank vegetable juices and potions. He scraped his sweat off with a butter knife, he dunked his head, at morning, in a horse water bucket, he waded barefoot through the lank backyard grass with his six-year-old son hunched on his shoulders and with his trousers rolled up to his knees, snagging garter snakes with his toes and gently letting them go.
He smoked, but did not inhale, cigars; he rarely drank anything stronger than beer. He never philandered nor strayed from his wife nor had second thoughts about his marriage. He never swore in the presence of ladies nor raised his voice with children. His hair was fine and chestnut brown and recurrently barbered but it had receded so badly since his twenties that he feared eventual baldness and therefore rubbed his temples with onions and myrtleberry oil in order to stimulate growth. He scissored his two-inch sun-lightened beard according to a fashion then associated with physicians. His eyes were blue except for iris pyramids of green, as on the back of a dollar bill, and his eyebrows shaded them so deeply he scarcely ever squinted or shied his eyes from a glare. His nose was unlike his mother?s or brother?s, not long and preponderant, no proboscis, but upturned a little and puttied, a puckish, low-born nose, the ruin, he thought, of his otherwise gallantly handsome countenance.
Four of his molars were crowned with gold and they gleamed, sometimes, when he smiled. He had two incompletely healed bullet holes in his chest and another in his thigh. He was missing the nub of his left middle finger and was cautious lest that mutilation be seen. He?d had a boil excised from his groin and it left a white star of skin. A getaway horse had jerked from him and fractured his ankle in the saddle stirrup so that his foot mended a little crooked and registered barometric changes. He also had a condition that was referred to as granulated eyelids and it caused him to blink more than usual, as if he found creation slightly more than he could accept.
He was a Democrat. He was left-handed. He had a high, thin, sinew of a voice, a contralto that could twang annoyingly like a catgut guitar whenever he was excited. He owned five suits, which was rare then, and colorful, brocaded vests and cravats. He wore a thirty-two-inch belt and a fourteen-and-a-half-inch collar. He favored red wool socks. He rubbed his teeth with his finger after meals. He was persistently vexed by insomnia and therefore experimented with a vast number of soporifics which did little besides increasing his fascination with pharmacological remedies.
Continues...
Excerpted from Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Theby Ron Hansen Copyright ©2007 by Ron Hansen. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B00COWLZ1K
- Publisher : Open Road Media; Reprint edition (May 28, 2013)
- Publication date : May 28, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 4201 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 324 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #103,611 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #107 in Historical Biographical Fiction
- #585 in U.S. Historical Fiction
- #730 in Historical Literary Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They appreciate the author's skillful use of language and deep character development. Many describe the story as realistic and authentic, with a Western setting. However, some readers feel the book is too long. Opinions differ on the character study, with some finding it interesting and moody, while others consider it overly detailed.
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Customers enjoy the book's readability. They find it interesting and well-written, with an engaging story and historical fiction that blends well. The author's writing style is described as good and the book is a worthwhile read.
"An engaging, wonderfully written and atmospheric account of the life, death, and relationship of Jesse James and Robert Ford. Just brilliant." Read more
"...through the movie again, so to say, and i'm happy because it's a very good book, every character is well described, from Jesse James, his life, his..." Read more
"...This is one of the best books I ever read, and I am always reading something...." Read more
"The book itself is amazing. My favorite! I have had the book for several years. I’ve read it a few times. It’s brilliant. My favorite...." Read more
Customers enjoy the writing quality. They praise the author's skillful use of language, describing the book as an elegant historical fiction novel. Readers appreciate the authentic language and feel of the west.
"An engaging, wonderfully written and atmospheric account of the life, death, and relationship of Jesse James and Robert Ford. Just brilliant." Read more
"...Some dialogue is missing. It’s still good and is read well.... but I hate that anything is missing." Read more
"...Hansen can certainly captivate the feel of the west and his language is authentic as shown by the following passage:..." Read more
"...Ron Hansen's style of writing is incredibly immersing...." Read more
Customers find the book well-researched and written. They appreciate the detailed characterizations of the James family, especially the larger ones. The author does an amazing job creating deep development in this historical fiction piece. Overall, customers find the book enlightening about Jesse James.
"...Yes, fiction, but obviously very well researched. Ron Hansen's style of writing is incredibly immersing...." Read more
"...The book also provides detailed characterizations of the James family, especially the larger-than-life mother, a nightmare of a woman...." Read more
"...Ron Hansen does such an amazing job at creating such deep development in this historical fiction piece...." Read more
"This is an excellent book. Well written and researched. One of my favorite books." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's realism. They describe it as realistic, true, and authentic. The story is described as a good Western with an interesting take on America.
"...Ford's last years after Jesse's assassination are (in my opinion) very realistic. It is written both as a history book and a novel...." Read more
"...A good Western, but also a really interesting statement about America." Read more
"...One of the best stories of Jesse James to date, the most realistic." Read more
"Western realism and a very good story..." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the character study. Some find the parts featuring Jesse James interesting and realistic, while others feel there is too much detail regarding ancillary characters and that the book is too detailed and long.
"...so to say, and i'm happy because it's a very good book, every character is well described, from Jesse James, his life, his mates, to his killer,..." Read more
"Too detailed therefore too "long". Pace dragged at times especially at the end." Read more
"...It's more of a moody, character study. Love love love this book." Read more
"...One of the best stories of Jesse James to date, the most realistic." Read more
Customers find the book a little long, but it's worth reading.
"...The book is overly long and at times irritating.It should have been cut down in size...." Read more
"Long and drawn out.......often confusing.....hard to follow.....lots of going back and rereading to figure out where the story was going." Read more
"...A little long, but well worth the effort." Read more
Customers find the book's pace slow at times. However, they still find it hard to put down.
"...At times, the pace can be slow, but it is still hard to put the book down...." Read more
"...books from a language/style perspective, though can, at times, move a little slowly. Other than that, highly recommended!" Read more
"Boring hard to get into very slow read had some good points in it though it was hard to keep on track" Read more
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The book features an interview with the author and the section "Jesse James, Facts and Falsehoods, Fiction and Film" to know more about the outlaw
The book features an interview with the author and the section "Jesse James, Facts and Falsehoods, Fiction and Film" to know more about the outlaw
The book covers the last three months of Jesse James's life and of his assassin's, Robert Ford. I could not put this book down and, when I had to, I couldn't wait to get back to it. Now I want to read a non-fiction book of the same thing to see just how much was true, just so I don't make a fool of myself in conversation by insisting that things in this book that may have been created by the author were true. Highly recommend the movie of the same name that is on DVD. It contains many direct pieces of this book.
Hansen clearly rejects a romanticized image of James.His Jesse James is a rather creepy character.However his assassin ,Bob Ford is even creepier.He is not at all motivated by law and order or moral sentiments.I didn't even get the impression that he was all that interested in the reward for killing James.He seems to resent James' exisistence.James looms too large for him and suffocates him.He wants to be a big man and killing James is the ticket to that.Unfortunately , Ford made a major blunder , at least from a public relations standpoint, he shot an unarmed James in the back while his wife and children were in the house.At first the public may have been largely relieved but as people began to think about it, they began to turn on Ford.It didn't help that Ford was cleary an arrogant jerk.
The book is overly long and at times irritating.It should have been cut down in size.Had it been sensibly edited ,it may have been a borderline great book .As it stands it's a very worthwhile book especially for people interested in American history.A good book to read before or after it would be TRUE GRIT in which Frank James and Cole Younger make a brief but telling guest appearance.