The search for the Holy Grail continues

Vick Mickunas of Yellow Springs interviews authors every Saturday at 7 a.m. and on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, visit www.wyso.org/programs/book-nook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.


The book

“House of the Rising Sun” by James Lee Burke (Simon and Schuster, 437 pages, $27.99)

Over the last 10 years or so James Lee Burke has been putting out a new book each summer, often in July. This past summer felt peculiar to me because he didn’t have a new book. I figured that perhaps this prolific author is finally slowing down a little bit. Burke did turn 79 last month.

Fortunately his latest book came out in December. As the saying goes; good things come to those who wait. Burke’s latest, “House of the Rising Sun,” is well worth those extra few months that I had to wait to read it.

Burke is known for his series about the Louisiana lawman Dave Robicheaux. Burke has also kept busy writing about the Holland family. A couple of recent books featured the Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland. This latest book is also about a Hackberry Holland but it is a different one. I believe that this one was the other Hackberry’s grandfather.

Last year Burke published “Wayfaring Stranger,” another book about the Holland family. This new book is a sequel to that one but it could be read like a prequel because the events he describes actually took place before the ones related in the previous book.

Burke draws some inspiration for these Holland tales from family legends. Burke’s mother was a Hollan (no letter “D” on the end) — the Hackberry Holland in this book apparently shares some traits with one of his mother’s ancestors. This particular Hackberry is a violent man who has a fondness for alcohol.

The story begins in 1916. American troops were tracking Mexican outlaw Pancho Villa along the Texas border. Hackberry appears. He’s in Mexico riding a stolen horse. He pauses to observe his surroundings: “this was a feral land, its energies as raw and ravenous as a giant predator that ingested the naive and incautious, a place closer to hell than to heaven.”

This observation sets the tone for what this reviewer considers to be Burke’s most savage book yet. Hackberry confronts some Mexican soldiers. There’s a violent encounter. Before Hackberry takes off he discovers a hearse filled with weaponry and a mysterious chalice. Could this be the legendary Holy Grail?

The hearse belongs to a vicious Austrian arms merchant. Over the course of this wild tale Hackberry eludes this dastardly villain. The bad guy wants his chalice back. He’ll do anything to get it. He would even kidnap and torture Hackberry’s son.

This drunken, brawling Hackberry has had a long estrangement from his son and from the boy’s mother, a woman who grew tired of Hackberry’s shenanigans years ago.

In an interview Burke told me that he thinks his three primary female characters in “House of the Rising Sun” are the best characterizations of women that he has ever done. One in particular, Maggie Bassett, is not somebody to be trifled with. James Lee Burke has written another ripping, rollicking yarn.

I cannot wait for the final installment in this current Holland trilogy.

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