Teddy Roosevelt comes to comic life in Jerome Charyn’s “tremendous[ly] fun . . . delightful novel” (Ron Charles, Washington Post).
Widely considered “one of our most rewarding novelists,” Jerome Charyn “has upped the ante” (Larry McMurtry) by re-creating the voice of Theodore Roosevelt through his derring-do adventures as New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon-to-be … commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon-to-be twenty-sixth president. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley’s assassination in 1901, Charyn positions Roosevelt as a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president. With an operatic cast, including “Bamie,” his handicapped older sister; Eleanor, his gawky little niece; as well as the devoted Rough Riders; the novel memorably features the lovable mountain lion Josephine, who helped train Roosevelt for his “crowded hour,” the charge up San Juan Hill. “Graced with vivid, vigorous writing” (Gerard Helferich, Wall Street Journal), The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King is a rollicking work of historical fiction that will appeal to fans of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
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Warning: don’t turn to the first page of Jerome Charyn’s remarkable new work of fiction The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King unless you have time to be utterly swept away for the next ___ hours.
Jerome Charyn has long been one of our most rewarding novelists, and he has upped the ante in The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King, his frolic about Teddy Roosevelt in the West.
Ya-ha-haw!
Who can resist that pulp fiction era cover art, reserved for stories about daredevil heroes?
Yes–That is Teddy Roosevelt, our 25th president, dressed in his Brooks Brothers uniform, custom-made for his fantasy-come-true chance to play at war on San Juan’s hills, his sidekick mascot cougar at his side!
I can’t think of any other president so deserving of action hero fame, for TR’s life was made up of Big Moments that prove that fact truly is stranger than fiction.
And Jerome Charyon’s The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King takes readers on a thrill ride of TR’s early life.
Born wealthy, son of a veritable saint nicknamed Great Heart, and brother to a self-destructive sybarite. Became a boy state assemblyman, taking on the corrupt New York party machine. Married for love; lost her and his beloved mother on the SAME DAY. Ran off to the Wild West to work himself into oblivion, facing bad guys and evil Pinkertons. Left little Alice to his sister to raise until, returning home, he reencounters his childhood sweetheart Edith and realizes he has to marry her.
Our hero reenters NYC politics, again goes up against corruption, becoming a royal pain so the politicos send him packing to Washington, DC to be Secretary of the Navy. TR pushes for war in Cuba against the Spaniards, cobbles together a ragtag group nicknamed the Rough Riders who become media darlings. Ignored and maligned, after much suffering and victory, the hero of San Juan Hill is made NY State Governor. Again becoming a royal pain, he is pressured to be Garfield’s VP where he, like every other VP, except perhaps Al Gore, rots away. And then Garfield is assassinated.
That’s just the first part of TR’s life.
You can read any one of several marvelous biographies, many thousands of pages have been written about him. Or…you could… go on a jaunt under Jerome Charyn’s capable hands and meet the Cowboy King in his own voice. Or do both. Read the scholarly bios, but don’t miss the chance to meet Teddy The Cowboy King. It’s a rollicking good ride.
I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
I know…I know…don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Generally, I’m not a hystorical fiction fan. Not because it isn’t good reading, but because I’m too interested in the fantasy type novels, and I never give historical a chance. Well, when this book was offered to me, I couldn’t help myself. This time, I judged the book by its cover, and I think it worked out pretty well.
I don’t know Jerome Charyn’s work, but I do really like his style of writing. The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King is narrated by Teddy Roosevelt (yes, the president), and is an interesting take on his life, and a pretty fun biography to read.
The downside to this novel, in my opinion, is that if you aren’t a history buff, it isn’t as easy to get into it. It’s still fun, just took me a little work to grasp everything.
For fans of historical fiction, I think this is an awesome tale and an interesting and fun look into Roosevelt’s life. Definitely check it out!
*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.*
Jerome Charyn is a one off: no other living American writer crafts novels with his vibrancy of historical imagination. If you think his novels about Dickinson and Lincoln are virtuosic works of art, The Cowboy King will astonish you anew. Here is Teddy Roosevelt as you’ve never before experienced him, and as you won’t soon forget him.
What Really Made Teddy (though he hated that nickname) Tick
Theodore was an author, politician, naturalist, and athlete, but he was a cowboy at heart. It always amazed me how a New York Knickerbocker aristocrat could adapt so naturally to the badlands, but Theodore took to it like he’d been born there. Jerome Charyn tells Theodore’s story as a memoir in first person, and his voice is not at all stiff or formal, as in the style of Theodore’s day and age. He tells us of his early life in Manhattan as a sickly asthmatic child whose doctors didn’t give him much time to live because of an alleged weak heart, and he defied them at every turn, taking up vigorous exercise, wrestling, and became fit and trim. We learn about his courtship and first marriage to Boston belle Alice Lee, who tragically died two days after giving birth to their daughter Alice, and to add to his grief, his mother died in the same house on the same day. He went against the custom of the time to court and marry his childhood sweetheart Edith Carow (widowers never remarried). He doesn’t go into great detail about his career as Assemblyman, Police Commissioner, governor of New York, Ass’t Secretary of the Navy, authorship of his many books, or having the Vice Presidency thrust upon him and subsequently the presidency after McKinley’s assassination, but tells us enough about it to let us know he’s still trying to find where his destiny lies. The bulk of the story is written about his exploits—the USS Maine, making a courtesy visit, was blown up in Havana Harbor and a few hundred Americans were killed. But President McKinley refused to declare war at first. A few days later, McKinley sent a declaration of war to Congress. Theodore wanted to serve as Lieutenant Colonel. His first U.S. volunteer cavalry became his Rough Riders, made up of a wide variety of men, cowboys, farmers, Indians, Mexicans, elites from the Ivy League colleges, socialites, and his brother-in-law. He had no trouble getting men to join. They flocked to him. His charge up San Juan Hill made him a hero. So, among all his other attributes, he was a military man—one of the most well-rounded figures in American history.
I recommend this book to anyone who’s already familiar with Roosevelt as president, but not with his life leading up to it.
*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.*
I enjoyed the heck out of this book! Imagine a literary fiction-ish retelling of, say, the legend of Paul Bunyan, and this is what you’d get. Teddy Roosevelt did lead an at-times larger-than-life sort of existence, and the author takes advantage of that fact…and yet, the book remains true to the facts (or at let the spirit of the facts) of TR’s life. One of my best reads so far this year.