Best known for “The Bridges of Madison County,” Robert James Waller sets his latest novel in a remote area of West Texas and spins a subtle, compact and completely engrossing tale.
The story opens as Winchell Dear, an old-time professional poker player, sits in his isolated ranch house, vaguely aware something is amiss. His housekeeper waits in her nearby small adobe house for the man who must dodge the Border Patrol and come over the Guapa Mountains to deliver his package. But on this night, there are also two men in expensive suits traveling from Los Angeles in a Lincoln Continental, so intent on their mission they are unaware of a greater danger.
Fifty-two years earlier, Winchell Dear’s father, a border patrolman, had told him there were only three things a man needed to know to get along in life: pistols, poker and fast Pullman trains. And with that, he began teaching his 15-year-old son how to shuffle and handle a .44-caliber revolver.
Over the years, Winchell Dear has had other teachers. One, in particular, warned him that no poker game is the genuine article unless the losers experience real pain. He told Dear to wear suspenders instead of belts and custom- made shoes because poker games can go on for a long time. Dear soon perfected his moves and learned how to spot the cheaters.
He bought the Two Fair Ranch with his winnings. A neighbor told him about an Indian who lived in the canyon. Dear went in search of him but found only a deserted mine. Yet after that, a side of venison often was found hanging by Dear’s ranch house.
On the night in question, the Comanche Peter Long Grass runs through the mesquite and cactus of the Guapa Mountains. In the years he has lived in these canyons, he has made them his home, and a moonlit profile he saw earlier signals danger to his quiet world.
Miles away, as the men in the Lincoln Continental speed through the night, they run into trouble with the law and have difficulty finding the ranch. But the man with the package makes it over the mountain, even as Winchell Dear, still uneasy, deals himself another hand of Solitaire.
Moving effortlessly between past and present, Waller deftly creates a cast of memorable characters and a story impossible to put down.
Sybil Downing is a Boulder novelist who writes a monthly column on new regional fiction.
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The Long Night of Winchell Dear
By Robert James Waller
Shaye Areheart Books, 160 pages, $21
