No one can write like Doctorow

P. 27 "There is great human shame when people die before they are ready. It's as if their living didn't matter at all."
P. 100 "... it pleasured me to feel the legal cap or read the briefs all salted down with Latin."
P. 104 "Everyone was quiet and drinking listening to her sing it through. She had a deep voice but she meant what she sang."
P. 203 "I can't remember her foul words... Only that it kept Jimmy rooted where he stood... His simpleton pride rising like manhood to her promises."

The "Bad Man from Bodie" comes to Hard Times, shoots a bunch of people, wrecks a whole bunch of things, and then sets fire to the town, before he steals someone's horse and Rides away.
"I sat down myself to draw a breath. But Bear built up a small pitfire and by its light, Molly - turning her head in pain - strangled a wail in her throat and locked my eyes in a terrible green gaze. A moment later she was crying again and the boy was crying too and the night breeze started to moan through The shanty boards like an awful chorus of ghosts, and with all that misery in such small space I thought for one second to get up and get out of there and ride away fast. But I could no more do that than Fee and Flo and the others could get up from their graves - the Bad Man had fixed us all in the spot and he had fixed me by leaving me alive."
( )

Hard Times is a small town in the old west, dilapidated even as it was being constructed. It is home to a hardware store, an undertaker, a tiny livery stable, and naturally, to a saloon with a couple of prostitutes. The narrator is a man named Blue, who is an agent for the stage that links the town to the outside world, something of an ambassador for the town, a man who assumed minor administrative tasks and in the bargain came to be called the Mayor.

I almost abandoned the novel, Doctorow's first, after the first chapter, so devastating was the carnage wrought by a single psycho drifter. And so feeble the effort to fight him. Blue has a rifle, and many are looking to him to defend them against the hooligan, but he doesn't.

After some time spent with another book or two, I did return to Hard Times, and I did complete it. It's well written, plotted, and paced. After the fires burn themselves out, the surviving residents take stock, and many of them pack up and leave. Blue persuades some to stay and rebuild, and he convinces newcomers to pitch in to resurrect the town. Blue builds a shelter, and takes in Jimmy, a boy orphaned by murder of his father, as well as Molly, a severely injured and traumatized bar girl. Molly wants revenge, Blue wants peace.

A reckoning does come.

NA

The Bad Man from Bodie, well he far surpasses being just ’bad’. Evil incarnate is more like it! In the first chapter, he rapes and kills and burns the town to the ground, causing the living residents to pack up and flee! The first dang chapter!
The rest of the book is the attempt to rebuild the town of Hard Times. It’s a well paced story, with a vein of dark humor flowing through it. It’s written by Blue, the de facto mayor of the town - both versions. Sort of like his diary. I found myself rooting for this ragtag group of ‘settlers’! Even the Russian!
But not Molly. She was a terrible person and I could not understand her or her behaviors. I didn’t like her at all. Not one bit.
A tragic western tale if there ever was one. And a dang fine read! ( )