Soon to be a TV Series on AMC starring Pierce Brosnan and co-written by Philipp Meyer.Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling epic, a saga of land, blood, and power that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century.
Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching … classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching examination of the bloody price of power, The Son is a gripping and utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American west with rare emotional acuity, even as it presents an intimate portrait of one family across two centuries.
Eli McCullough is just twelve-years-old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his Texas homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him as a captive. Despite their torture and cruelty, Eli–against all odds–adapts to life with the Comanche, learning their ways, their language, taking on a new name, finding a place as the adopted son of the chief of the band, and fighting their wars against not only other Indians, but white men, too-complicating his sense of loyalty, his promised vengeance, and his very understanding of self. But when disease, starvation, and westward expansion finally decimate the Comanche, Eli is left alone in a world in which he belongs nowhere, neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild.
Deftly interweaving Eli’s story with those of his son, Peter, and his great-granddaughter, JA, The Son deftly explores the legacy of Eli’s ruthlessness, his drive to power, and his life-long status as an outsider, even as the McCullough family rises to become one of the richest in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege.
Harrowing, panoramic, and deeply evocative, The Son is a fully realized masterwork in the greatest tradition of the American canon-an unforgettable novel that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy.
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The Son, an epic novel by Philipp Meyer, covers more than 150 years of the McCullough family, from a humble Texas homestead to the oil booms of the 20th century.
In 1849 Eli McCullough, 13-year-old son of Texas homesteaders, is captured by Comanches after they raid the farm and brutally kill his mother and sister. At first, Eli is treated like a slave, doing women’s chores, until he stands up like a man and defies the women. He learns tribal skills of riding, hunting, and warfare. He learns their language, takes an Indian name, and becomes the band chief’s adopted son. He fights in their wars against other Indians and against white men. Illness, starvation, and the infringement of settlers plague the tribe, and Eli finds himself alone in a world in which he belongs nowhere, neither white nor Indian, civilized or wild. He must decide which path to take.
The story toggles between memories of three main characters: Eli, known as “the Colonel” from his Texas Ranger days, Eli’s son Peter, and Eli’s great-granddaughter Jeanne Anne. Each has a part in the tumultuous rise through the acquisition of land, and the industries of cattle and oil. The individual stories are sometimes brutal, the people scheming, the reality of gaining property often criminal.
The Son, 580 pages of vivid Texas history, speaks of people caught up in the pursuit of power, wealth, and privilege beyond what most of us will ever know. While reading this epic novel, I was often reminded of two of my favorites— Edna Ferbers’ Giant, and Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.
I very much enjoyed The Son, especially the sections about Eli’s early life with the Comanche. The historic details are fascinating and the story believable. Brutality, power and greed are realistically portrayed. I highly recommend this gripping novel.
I truly enjoyed this book. It is a well written saga that moved me in many ways. Highly recommended.
The characters are realistic and,if you can follow the story, it would be great. However, jumping back and forth from one period to another and one character to another, really bothered me. I found I had to go back and read some sections again and again to make sense of the story. Read this one only if you can read for long periods at a time and have nothing bothering you while you are reading.
Too much descriptive gore
A very good story that also opens our eyes to what it might be like to be stolen by Indians. Also gives us insight into what the Indians thought of the whites and the captives they took. A glimpse of the Indian way of life and the virtues they admired and the rules they lived by.
This is a masterpiece. Full stop.
I purchased the book because the series on TV was interesting. This was a rare case where I enjoyed the show better than the book.
A saga from different points-of-view about a Texas family, from a settler-era kidnapping of the titular person to the end of the oil-boom in the Lone Star state. Meyer himself knows whereof he speaks/writes: when buffalo hide tanning is mentioned, he actually did it. Off the record, he also said that some of the writers about the West are often inaccurate; one is one of my favorite writers! [Cormac McCarthy]
There is violence in “The Son,” yes, but the Wild Wild West is definitely a part of America’s history–and PRESENT. Sadly.
Philipp Meyer’s The Son was featured in a 2015 “best books our staff read” round-up. The Son was described as an “old-fashioned epic of the American West” that “imagines the rise to power of the McCulloughs, one of Texas’s most dominant oil and ranching families.” It sounded a bit too much like Leila Meacham to pass up.
The Son is actually three narratives, told me members of three different generations of the McCullough family, that together create the family’s narrative. The most compelling is that of Eli, the patriarch, whose family is murdered and who is himself abducted by Comanche Indians in early adolescence. To say the experience left an impression that remained for the rest of his 100 years is an understatement if ever there was one. This was the formative experience of his life – which says a lot for a many who then rode with the Rangers, served with the Confederates, and basically settled his part of Texas.
His son, Peter, is cut of a different cloth. He is marked much later in life, as an adult, when violence erupts between the Anglos and the Mexicans, pitting neighbor-against-neighbor and, in his case, father-against-son. From the elderly Jeanne Anne, Eli’s great-granddaughter, we receive a contemporary account of her family’s legacy, and especially the weight she feels to continue building what her forebears began.
By far, the strongest parts of the book are those narrated by Eli, particularly the early chapters with the Comanches. Meyer’s description of the tribe being slowly decimated by disease and war are hauntingly beautiful and at the end of the day, it was the Comanches who left the strongest impression of all on me.
I’m not sure I would go so far as to peg this the best book I read all year, but that it is a good book – even a great book – there can be no doubt. This is a portrait of the American West in all of its violent glory. The McCulloughs, all of them, are secondary.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2016/02/the-son.html)
A very worthwhile read about the genesis of the Lone Star State through the eyes of this author’s creations.