From Publishers Weekly
This burlesque rewrite of American history stars roguish Maj. Luther "Yellowstone" Kelly, hero of dime novelist Ned Buntline. Here Kelly (last seen in Kelly Blue ) tries desperately to duck the orders of that dangerous, childish superpatriot, Thoedore Roosevelt ("Teethadore"), who's spoiling for war. Old Injun fighter Kelly, now 50 and goutish, is still searching for "a decent seegar and a warm, willing woman." T. R., as assistant secretary of the Navy, taps Kelly to recruit Rough Riders, ruffians to be officered by Ivy Leaguers. Among Kelly's enlistees are Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In Cuba, the Kid leads T. R.'s horse up San Juan Hill after the Riders refuse to follow Teddy into battle. Remaining episodes become thinner and thinner as Kelly escapes ambushes by Boers in South Africa and by Igorote tribesmen in the Philippines. He and his latest flame, Lucretia, survive a shipwreck during a typhoon and, as the book ends, the two seem intent on settling down on a California farm. Bowen is indebted to Mark Twain for his backwoods style and for his hero's cynicism toward civilization, politics and war. But, to misquote Twain, anyone looking for a realistic plot should be shot.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Charming, wily Luther Kelly (Kelly Blue, 1991, etc.) follows orders from a blackmailing Theodore Roosevelt--orders that will take him around the world via Cuba, South Africa, and the Philippines. Mohandas Gandhi, Lady Randolph Churchill and son, William Howard Taft, Butch Cassidy and Sundance, and Philippine patriot Emilio Aguinaldo are among the real-life figures who cross the path of western scout and extremely reluctant US Army Major Luther ``Yellowstone'' Kelly as he does the bidding of America's most ambitious imperialist--the man he calls ``Teethadore.'' The future president persists in sending Kelly, now in his late 40s, to every trouble spot on earth to check out the possibilities for imperial interests. Kelly and Roosevelt are actually in harness in Cuba, where Kelly, as usual, saves the Rough Rider's bacon. Kelly has one politically unrelated and thoroughly profitable escapade, a trek with his San Francisco Chinese tailor to recover a pure jade boulder, the profits from which set Kelly up for life. Kelly sets out to escort the fabulous rock to China but is sidetracked by a typhoon in mid-Pacific and winds up in the middle of the Boer War- -where he runs into his old South African flame, his son Dirk (of whose existence he had been unaware), Young Winston, and Young Winston's mum. Lady Randolph is now Mrs. Cornwallis-West and busy as she can be running a hospital ship. Of course, she's not too busy to minister to the attractive Mr. Kelly for the second time in her life. And Mr. Kelly is certainly not too busy for Lucretia Sams, the gorgeous adulteress he meets on duty in the Philippines.... The ironic ``aw-shucks'' prose style that never lets up will not be to everyone's taste, but Kelly's ribald adventures can usually wear down the resistance of even the most cynical reader as history is revised with a vengeance. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Praise for the Yellowstone Kelly series:
“Very, very funny.” —Publishers Weekly
“The Old West is a wonderfully wild place in Bowen’s hands.” —Kirkus Reviews
“[The Yellowstone Kelly series] features an endearing, slightly mysterious protagonist who always has one more unexplored trait, unparalleled dialogue that hints at ethnic or regional inflections, and a very sly sense of humor.” —Booklist
About the Author
Peter Bowen (b. 1945) is an author best known for mystery novels set in the modern American West. When he was ten, Bowen’s family moved to Bozeman, Montana, where a paper route introduced him to the grizzled old cowboys who frequented a bar called The Oaks. Listening to their stories, some of which stretched back to the 1870s, Bowen found inspiration for his later fiction.
Following time at the University of Michigan and the University of Montana, Bowen published his first novel, Yellowstone Kelly, in 1987. After two more novels featuring the real-life Western hero, Bowen published Coyote Wind (1994), which introduced Gabriel Du Pré, a mixed-race lawman living in fictional Toussaint, Montana. Bowen has written fourteen novels in the series, in which Du Pré gets tangled up in everything from cold-blooded murder to the hunt for rare fossils. Bowen continues to live and write in Livingston, Montana.
