Bushwhackers 01

'Bushwhakers' was a great western novel, with the perfect picture of evil, gun-toting villians and the hero (in this case heroes) defeating the villians hands down. I thought more could have been done to enhance the book's sophistication, regardless of era. The violence was kept quite tame considering the nature of the book, and the writer did quite a good job for his first time at novel writing. I am surprised that the book has not been produced as a screenplay.

Bushwackers contains pages of hollywood style western action, womanizing and double dealing. The book depicts two brothers recruited by Frank James to join Quantrill's irregular unit to fight the Jayhawkers and Federal Army.The book can be finished in a night or two so do not expect any deep insight into the zeitgeist of the era. Snippets of personalties of such real life figures as Jesse James, Quantrill and General Ewing are a few the colorful characters brought back to life in these pages -- as well as fictionalized accounts of two of the more infamous events in the western theater of the Civil War: the Lawrence massacre and the makeshift Federal prison collapse which killed Missouri women.