Book # 17 - Doc

Sometimes it is a real treat to read a book one would have never have even glanced at.  Doc by Mary Doria Russell would have been one of those books for me.  Historical Fiction based relatively tightly on fact, hmmm.

I am not generally a reader of Westerns, and other than knowing about them, couldn't really care about Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday.  So this book pleasantly surprised and then engrossed me.

Russell is an engaging writer who captures the reader's attention and keeps you hooked.  The narrative is compelling with complex characters.  It is also pretty clean for a book mainly centered in Dodge City.  I sometimes keep to children's literature simply because I do not need the graphic scenes in some adult books.  This book did not have any graphic scenes which I appreciated, especially since almost all of the female characters work in brothels.

One interesting thing I found in this reading project is how many writers include Catholics and do it warmly.  This book is no exception with Fr. Von Angensperg.  It also gives the Jesuit missionaries of Kansas and the Southwest their due.  There's the passage where the priest is in Dodge for a funeral and this quote:

"For the rest of his long and eventful life, Alexander von Angensperg might have topped just about any war story told in a Jesuit residence.  He could have listened, and nodded, and acknowledged each man's most colorful adventrue, and then achieved an awed silence with just six words:  "I heard confessions in Dodge City."" (79)

It also recounts his missionary trips by donkey, and the Jesuits' work with Indian children.

Russell tells a great tale here.  She fleshes out real and imaginary characters, and makes one feels like they know these men and women, plus a small sliver of America's past.