Wildwood Boys / by James Carlos Blake

[Kim Allen Scott]

Writing believable historical fiction is a real challenge.  Not only does the author have to accurately place characters in the proper settings at the correct times, but dialogue must be invented that seems authentic to both the period and the person.  Unfortunately James Carlos Blake has written a novel that only achieves the first half of this equation.   The subject at hand is none other than William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, one of the most notorious guerrillas who operated in Missouri and Kansas during the American Civil War.  In this vicious and brutal theater of conflict there was little mercy shown on either side, but the historical record of Anderson’s atrocities is particularly appalling.  Not content with merely killing the enemy, Anderson and his men made a specialty of mutilating the bodies of their victims, even going as far as taking scalps which they used to ornament their horse tack.  What is particularly galling about this fictional depiction of these monsters and their crimes is the author’s ineffective attempt to “humanize” his subjects, as if descriptions of the wanton slaughter and disfigurement of fellow humans can be conveniently sandwiched between episodes of “good-old-boy” joking and romantic lovemaking.  Many years ago I read a novel called “Woe to Live On” by Daniel Woodrell, a fictional work covering this very same topic but with a much more authentic edge.  Woodrell’s book was subsequently made into a movie titled “Ride with the Devil” that managed to capture the sheer horror of the border war and was somewhat faithful to the novel.  I shudder to think of a cinematic depiction of “Wildwood Boys,” which would unavoidably present its killers with an “aw, shucks” sort of affable sympathy.