Two Books on the NYT List

I have wanted to do this for some time; after 'Cold Wind', I must take the time.

I am an author of non-fiction, an unreconstructed Texan, and a voracious reader for five decades.  My library includes every book written by C.J. Box -- as well as every book by John Grisham, Lee Child, Stephen Hunter, Ken Follett, Ted Bell, and others.  With plot, character development, and descriptive narrative, C.J. Box has moved to the top of that august list of novelists.

Mr. Box is reminescent of C.S. Lewis, who in introducing Americans to the norms and narrative of British life between the world wars, also causes us to consider the norms and nobility of Western Christianity at the dawn of its retrogression.  C.J. Box now does the same for my land, the American West.  And not a moment too soon.

C.J. Box is finally reaching those of us American readers who have had our fill of novels set in New York, L.A., and Chicago.  These narratives simply aren't real to us who live where sunrise brings birdsong and lowing cattle, not wailing sirens and honking horns.

So.  That's one thing Box is doing for American literature.  But he's doing much more.

Through the hearts of Joe and Marybeth Pickett, Nate Romanowski, and the others, author Box is making us think about who we are, we Americans; what we've allowed our servants to become, and what we should do about it. 

C.J. Box has given me many evenings of heart-pounding enjoyment; using the English language, American culture, human nature, and raw nature.  His characters come up off the pages to kill, to weep, to dance.   Box makes them not only real, but so compelling in their 'regularness' that we can see ourselves in them.  A rare talent for a novelist.

But Mr. Box has done something more valuable by far, in being from Wyoming and setting his novels (mostly) in that big place.  Not that you'd know it now, but 'my country' (Texas) was a republic among the nations of the world; our culture like that of Wyoming; our early politics being of Spain and Mexico, as Wyoming's politics have always been born in Washington D.C..  But urbanity is changing Texas -- and not for the good, as is the case with all of American 'flyover country'.  

Politics have pressured and even twisted the American heartland, including the last outpost of the American spirit: the West.  We need a C.J. Box to show us what we are losing, and may soon lose for good. Joe Pickett -- a regular, honest, good guy with all the foibles of real people; a Wyoming game warden, not a larger-than-life superhero as seen in most novels -- his task is to re-ground us as rural Americans.  So far, he's doing a damned good job.

There was a time when every little American boy and girl wanted to be a character from the Old Testament; then, from a Walt Disney movie.  Then Hollywood and Washington, D.C. re-programmed two generations.  So it's vital that young American men and women want to be Joe and Marybeth Pickett.  Civilizations really do hang on good defeating evil!

With Cold Wind, author Box opens many of today's festering social wounds, but from not only the rural perspective, but that of the vast American West.  The soul of a great civilization, bared in a Wyoming game warden?  Read the books, and tell me it isn't so.  It is so.

A bloated, heartless, often out-of-control federal bureaucracy against the Western governor, rancher, farmer, hunter, and honest peace officer.  This battle has never been opened up as Mr. Box is doing; and not a moment too soon.

A common sight around here is an extended semi-trailer loaded with gargantuan wind generator blades, headed for West Texas.  I often wondered about the politics and economics of that 'eyesore industry'.  As Wyman Meinzer's photographs cause us to treasure God's gift of natural beauty, C.J. Box's metanarrative in the Joe Pickett novels cause us to treasure what we may soon lose: the heart of the Old West in every real American.

Well done, Mr. Box; keep them coming.  We who are giving our lives to turning it around, need bracing reading while we do it. 

D.M. Zuniga

Founder, AmericaAgain! (www.JoinAmericaAgain.com)

Author, 'This Bloodless Liberty'