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Do you need a cowboy poet in your life? I bet that is a question some of you have never considered. I would argue that after you read All Things Left Wild by James Wade that the answer would be yes indeed.
The publisher of this beautiful novel describes it as such, “After an attempted horse theft goes tragically wrong, sixteen-year-old Caleb Bentley is on the run with his mean-spirited older brother across the American Southwest at the turn of the twentieth century. Caleb's moral compass and inner courage will be tested as they travel the harsh terrain and encounter those who have carved out a life there, for good or ill. Wealthy and bookish Randall Dawson, out of place in this rugged and violent country, is begrudgingly chasing after the Bentley brothers. With little sense of how to survive, much less how to take his revenge, Randall meets Charlotte, a woman experienced in the deadly ways of life in the West. Together they navigate the murky values of vigilante justice.”
This novel deftly unfurls the parallel narratives with Wade's dueling narrators, Caleb's first-person, outlaw rumination to contrast the third-person, poetic observations of heartbroken Randall. Wade transports his modern perspective to this Wild Western, dissecting what makes a good man as well as the illness—something we modern folks describe as toxic masculinity—that gets these bruised male egos in the end. Charlotte—the very capable, intelligent, and unsung Black heroine of the novel—is the perfect voice for Wade's conclusions on what makes a good man. When Randall asks his wise and beautiful cohort what makes a man worthy, she answers without blinking an eye, “Kindness. Sure, it don't hurt if he's handsome and has a job. But most of all, he ought to be kind.” This right here is part of the thesis of this beautiful novel: great men lead with kindness. That's something altogether different than the typical male trope of rugged individualism wrapped up in maleficence.
But don't get me wrong. This novel has adventure with wild characters and a philosophizing antagonist named Grimes, an unrelenting villain that terrorizes the Southwest. It wouldn't be a Western without that. But Wade excels in literary flourishes, painting the landscape with poetic strokes like this early passage. “Things were different at night, cold and still and dark, and when the clouds burned off, the stars were still there as they'd been since before we began shining lights back at them. They scalded the night sky in their dying, and when they fell we whispered wishes to ourselves for things only the stars might understand.” Wow! And that coming from the murderous Caleb, a man most characters in the novel perceive as rough and tumble, but the reader learns is a man worthy of redemption.
All Things Left Wild is a literary Western with beauty and wit, deeper and more substantial than its dusty genre would leave you to believe. Do you need a cowboy poet in your life? With All Things Left Wild, the answer is undoubtedly YES.
I loved this novel and I highly recommend it. I would give this novel 5 stars.
