While it's impossible to say that I've read everything Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale has written (the man is insanely prolific!), I will note that I've read the majority of his catalogue. Lansdale is one of the greatest living writers, and his oeuvre ramble over every genre--from southern-fried bizarro to horror to action to noir, and on into literary fiction and beyond. Lansdale excels in the field of gripping westerns, and this novel is a perfect introduction into his superior work in that narrative province.
The Thicket is an action-packed revenge drama. Written in the first-person from the amiable--if green--perspective from our narrator Jack Parker, the book opens up with a few scenes of subtle familial loss. Things take a turn when Jack and his sister Lula encounter a pack of outlaws on a ferry as they try to cross the swollen Sabine River. From there, things get a little dicey as Jack is tasked with hunting down his sister and exacting a measure of revenge for his fallen grandfather.
This is Champion Joe at his best. The novels pacing and attention to scenery is immaculate. I've read this one twice, and both experiences had me turning pages well past it was time to rest my head for the night. Lansdale's dialogue is some of the best in the business, and he builds similes and metaphors into the writing with such ease that we learn so much about about the philosophies and fears of these characters that it feels like we're riding through East Texas on a couple of stollen horses right alongside them.
Shorty is an erudite small person (a midget, as the text never lets us forget) with a lot of hard bark on him. He's been kicked around by the world (both figuratively and literally), but he has a real sense of honor, a hatred for animal abusers, and a quick draw and sure shot with a Sharps long gun.
Eustace is another character with a heart filled with honor and goodness. Set in the years after the Civil War, Eustace is a Black man still coming to grips with the legacy of Southern slavery and his place in the world. He's alternately wise and hilarious, and there's nobody I'd rather have at the vanguard when it comes time to charge a remote cabin packed to the rafters with outlaws.
Cut-throat Bill, our primary antagonist, is a love-starved cretin--a man so detestable in his philosophy and behavior that you'll be rooting for his demise in the last hundred pages right along side this oddly matched posse.
And then there's Hog. Yep, they travel with a semi-domesticated wild pig who also figures heavily in the action.
Jack Parker has some sand in him, as Lansdale makes readily clear, and his transformation from timid farm boy to driven mercenary is both refreshing and expertly parceled out by the author. Jack is a character we can all get behind.
The traveling party is filled out by a prostitute named Jimmie Sue, a disfigured lawman named Winton, and a jailhouse janitor named Spot. It's an odd collection of characters, to be sure, but that's a huge part of what makes Lansdale's yarns so captivating. In so many of his stories, he brings the downtrodden, the overlooked, and the under-estimated people of the world together to do impossible things. This empathy for humanity and understanding of the emotional complexities of his characters is a large part of what makes his stories so compelling.
Elliott Lester directed a fine film adaption of The Thicket. I watched it this weekend, and Peter Dinklage and Juliette Lewis give excellent turns in what is a gem of a western.
I'm moving into some pulp territory with my next collection of stories (The Rack) for the new year, but if you haven't read Joe Lansdale and you're looking for a story that is carefully crafted and emotionally poignant, this is a story that should be at the top of your TBR pile for January...
