Jim Kane

Great book about the trials and tribulations of a modern day cowboy in Southern Arizona and Northern New Mexico. Obviously written by someone who knows the trade. It's also obvious that the book was written before the current drug culture began to dominate Mexico and the United States. I don't think Kane would be happy with the current situation in Mexico.

I first read this in the early '80s. It is terribly funny, terribly sad, and terribly true. Joe Paul based many of the situations in Jim Kane on the experiences of the Sorrels and Kane families, and well as his own. This is a bittersweet look at life in the border cattle community. Please don't think that this is the same quality as Pocket Money, the film that was (very loosely) based on the novel Jim Kane. Although Pocket Money had an excellent cast, the screenplay and locations were taken out of Brown's control, and the result was a cinematic hodgepodge with lots of eye candy but no story. If you like stories...if you REALLY like stories, read Jim Kane.

Great book, kind of autobiographical by JPS Brown a rancher in Arizona. Back in the 60's he spent a lot time buying rodeo stock in northern Mexico. The movie Pocket Change with Paul Newman and Lee Marvin is based on this book. Mr. Brown hated the movie! I found it very interesting an better than the movie, which was fun too.

Great story here! Brown's characters are great and very real. When he introduces a new one, I can picture the guy--he's this friend of my Dad's, or some guy I went to high school with, or some old cowboy I see every time I got to the sale barn or the feed store. The main character is great--he's not hero material, he's not perfect, but he knows cattle, and he knows how to work, and he's a master of pushing on relentlessly even when everything goes wrong. The plot is great--sort of like the main character--it just pushes on, never building to any huge confict or climax, just goes right along telling the story. The story is set down on the border in the 1960s. There are no semi-trucks, no 4-wheelers; cattle are still worked from horseback and loaded into straight trucks. The feel of that era, the feel of the region, and the feel of the cattle business are perfect.No mere novelist, no matter how accomplished, could have ever written this book. Only a cattleman could.

This book should be mandatory reading for everyone living on the southwest border! Arizonan Jim Kane ventures into Mexico to capitalize on what he knows and does best, buying and selling cattle. His adventures will make you at once laugh, then cry. Kane's cattle deals throughout northern Mexico, which always appear so simple and promising, are complicated by the shadowy complexity of Mexican commerce. Every man of power in every town, large or small, has an angle to ensure his palm is greased to allow the passage of cattle. Kane fights to overcome stifling odds and Mexican greed. Author J.P.S. Brown masterfully illustrates the Mexican enigma; just when you believe no goodness exists south of the border, Brown introduces you to the warmth that is purely Mexican. Kane is possessed of the wile and guile to give him a fighting chance. A chapter entitled "The Husbandman" pays homage to the love of an old Mexican for his land and his animals. As a native Arizonan, a descendent of southern Arizona pioneer ranchers and an avid reader, I rate J.P.S. Brown and Jim Kane a solid 5 stars!