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EL PASO

Winston Groom

Three decades after the first publication of Forrest Gump, Winston Groom returns to fiction with this sweeping American epic. Replete with gunfights, daring escapes, and an unforgettable bullfight, El Paso, with its textured blend of history and legend, becomes an indelible portrait of the American Southwest in the waning days of the frontier. Winston Groom is the author of twenty previous books, including Forrest Gump, Conversations with the Enemy (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Shiloh 1862, and The Generals. He served in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division and lives in Point Clear, Alabama.
Long fascinated with the Mexican Revolution and the vicious border wars of the early twentieth century, Winston Groom brings to life a much-forgotten period of history in this sprawling saga of heroism, injustice, and love. An episodic novel set in six parts, El Paso pits the legendary Pancho Villa, a much-feared outlaw and revolutionary, against a thrill-seeking railroad tycoon known as the Colonel, whose fading fortune is tied up in a colossal ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico. But when Villa kidnaps the Colonel’s grandchildren in the midst of a cattle drive, and absconds into the Sierra Madre, the aging New England patriarch and his adopted son head to El Paso, hoping to find a group of cowboys brave enough to hunt the Generalissimo down. Replete with gunfights, daring escapes, and an unforgettable bullfight, El Paso, with its textured blend of history and legend, becomes an indelible portrait of the American Southwest in the waning days of the frontier. Winston Groom is the author of twenty previous books, including Forrest Gump, Conversations with the Enemy (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Shiloh 1862, and The Generals. He served in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division and lives in Point Clear, Alabama.
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Published 2016-10-01 by Liveright

Comments

Groom’s expansive, rich novel is set in the harsh deserts and mountains of northern Mexico during the 1916 Mexican revolution, with sharply drawn fictional characters in a bloody mix with Gen. Pancho Villa and a cast of true-life personalities. . . . Battles, a tense prisoner exchange, and clever ransom negotiations round out this historically vivid and marvelously complex tale.

Dark and daring, El Paso does for the West what Gump did for the South ? it takes a tumultuous, crucial time in American history and feeds it to us in ways acute and unforgettable.

Groom’s epic narrative is a hefty yet entertaining page-turner, at times funny, heartbreaking, emotional, and brutal. An involving, intricate story vividly told.

[Groom] combines military savvy with storytelling skill for a satisfying saga pitting an American railroad tycoon against Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa…An engaging epic that could be headed for the bestseller lists and then the big screen. This is the big one that fans have been waiting for, and they’ll grab it up like they would a delicious box of chocolates.

Hungarian: Tarandus Kiado