Trick of the Trade

Ralph Cotton has once again written a historical western so real and so entertaining, it's hard to tell fact from fiction. everybody has written about Custer's last stand, but Cotton has put a real spin on it with Nash's love interst in Elizabeth Custer. I'm glad he focused on the battle of Reno Hill. Too little has been said about the Reno Huill battle. Cotton pulled it off expertly. Anyone who knows history knows the battle scenes in this book are acurate.

"Trick of the Trade" has little to do with the real Custers, or real history, but if seen as a parallel universe tale, it is ripping good fun to read and I can believe that Nash was smitten with Libbie and rode into hell to deliver her last letter to "Auddie" (Autie). A realistic look at a man who is less than fully in compliance wih the law -- but men made their own laws back then. And the Army was often between a rock and a hard place. I even enjoyed the touches Cotton put on Benteen.

Ralph Cotton's Jeston Nash is the kind of man a lady dreams of finding by her side on a dark sultry night... And the kind of Outlaw a man prays to a merciful God NOT to meet up with in the silence of the same darkness... The kind of man who'd sell you a tainted horse (completely against his will, you understand), protesting all the way to the bank. ...the kind of man who played wet-nurse to a young country; growing by leaps and bounds in its push to the Pacific Ocean. The kind of man who figured prominently in the real history of America. As Nash's friend, Quiet Jack often says: "Yuh just had to be there." Thanks to Cotton's words, you are

Ralph Cotton is one of those few writers who do not get complacent after publishing a couple of novels. If anything, Cotton is getting better at telling tales of the Old West through the eyes of Jeston Nash. Trick of the Trade is just another example of the fine writing he is capable of.