The Winter Family
A Novel
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4.2 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A Globe & Mail Top 100 Book of 2015
Longlisted for The 2015 Giller Prize
A Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Prize
"Sadistic but mesmerizing..."
-- The New York Times Book Review
Tracing a group of ruthless outlaws from its genesis during the American Civil War all the way to a final bloody stand in the Oklahoma territories, The Winter Family is a hyperkinetic Western noir that reads like a full-on assault to the senses.
Spanning the better part of three decades, The Winter Family traverses America's harsh, untamed terrain, both serving and opposing the fierce advance of civilization. Among its twisted specimens, the Winter Family includes the psychopathic killer Quentin Ross, the mean and moronic Empire brothers, the impassive ex-slave Fred Johnson, and the dangerous child prodigy Lukas Shakespeare But at the malevolent center of this ultraviolent storm is their cold, hardened leader, Augustus Winter—a man with an almost pathological resistance to the rules of society and a preternatural gift for butchery.
From their service as political thugs in a brutal Chicago election to their work as bounty hunters in the deserts of Arizona, there's a hypnotic logic to Winter's grim borderland morality that plays out, time and again, in ruthless carnage.
With its haunting, hard-edged style, The Winter Family is a feverishly paced meditation on human nature and the dark contradictions of progress.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jackman's novel is a blood-soaked historical western covering over three decades of mayhem, from the Civil War to 1900 Los Angeles. There are no good guys here, just killers, thieves, liars, crooks of every stripe, and piles of victims killed in numerous ways. The Winter Family is a gang of vicious killers and renegade Union soldiers, formed in 1864, during the Union Army's destructive march through Georgia and the Carolinas. Led by Augustus Winter, the most cold-blooded of all, the gang robs, rapes, and butchers everyone they meet even the other Yankees are appalled at their brutality. Augustus eventually leads the marauders in postwar fights with carpetbaggers and the Ku Klux Klan, before being hired as political leg-breakers in Chicago during the corrupt and violent 1872 elections. Winter and his trigger-happy pals are too effective in fomenting election-day violence and have to flee Chicago, stopping just long enough to torture and murder their hapless benefactor. The gang spends the ensuing years raiding the west, from Canada to Arizona, though by 1891 a showdown in Oklahoma finds the law, and internal betrayal, whittling the gang's numbers down considerably. The strength of the story is Jackman's vivid portrayal of men who choose violence and lawlessness as their way of life, and the justifications they create to rationalize their immoral behavior. This is a chilling tale.
