Just released from prison, Jolie “Rocket” Richards struggles to get her life back after being incarcerated for seven years. As a former rodeo superstar, best horse trainer on the California central coast, the town drunk, and occasional slut, Rocket just wants her life back… and to find the person who framed her for the murder of her mother.Romance, a new friend, or a new dog were never on her … on her agenda.
Until a rifle bullet tears her life apart.
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The modern Western isn’t a genre that makes a big return on the cultural radar. Fitting the slower rhythms and more fundamental ethos of the cowboy life to the demands and velocity of the modern world is a tricky business. Craig Johnson’s Longmire series does it by sticking his characters out in the wilds of Wyoming. Author Baer Charlton meets the challenge head-on, setting Dry Bridge of Vengeance in Southern California’s Santa Ynez valley, a rapidly suburbifying, gentrifying enclave a figurative stone’s throw from tony Santa Barbara.
Jolie Richards — “Rocket” from her rodeo days — has just been sprung from state prison after serving a seven-year stretch for a murder she didn’t commit. Back at her ancestral home, she finds that time has both moved on and stagnated. The same infatuations and rivalries are simmering under the surface, but there’s a hole her sized that’s been partly filled by other business. The city people are moving into their ranchettes and chewing away at the frontier atmosphere, crowding out the people who’ve been raising horses and cattle here for generations. As Jolie goes about trying to rebuild her life, she has one goal hovering over the horizon: discovering who killed her mother and framed Jolie for the deed.
With a title like this, you may expect a ’50s Western featuring, say, Richard Widmark killing his way through the pack of scoundrels who done him wrong. I’d half-expected that myself. What I got instead was a portrait of a woman rode hard and put up wet in a world slowly turning alien on her, stitching together some peace and a family of sorts where she can find it. What violence there is comes mostly in the last few chapters, after we’ve come to know everyone involved well enough to care about what happens.
Look up “hard-bitten” in Wikipedia and you’ll find a picture of Jolie: former up-and-coming rodeo star (she was a steer roper), former town drunk, former (self-described) town slut, former daughter of one of the longer-established families in the area. Forty-six and high-mileage — a legacy of both prison and rodeo — she’s hardly the kind of female protagonist you expect this side of contemporary women’s fiction. But Rocket isn’t all surliness and sinew: she’s good with dogs, horses, and lost souls of all kinds in a flinty way that hides a generally good heart.
The plot lopes along at its own speed. The settings are well-realized, though some familiarity with SoCal rangeland will make the descriptions more meaningful. The author’s generous with the time he gives his supporting characters, making many of them as human as Rocket. The dialog fits the characters like a broken-in boot. The author seems to know his way around a ranch as well as a rodeo arena, a must in this kind of story.
Dry Bridge of Vengeance’s blood-and-guts title obscures a redemption story of sorts focused on a protagonist who hasn’t drawn a good hand for half her life. If you’re expecting nonstop action with a superwoman heroine, you’ll be disappointed. But if you let the narrative have its head and set its own pace, you’ll have a rewarding ride.