Colonel Rutherford's Colt

by Lucius Shepard

Jimmy Roy Guy, a gun dealer with an imagination that borders on mystic vision, delights in telling elaborate stories about the histories of the weapons he sells. When Jimmy makes an agreement with the widow of white supremacist martyr Bob Champion to broker her husband's infamous Colt .45, the widow stipulates that he keep it out of the hands of Champion's disciple, who considers it a powerful talisman for his racist agenda. But Jimmy is not intimidated by "the Major"--for the gun has launched a story, and when Jimmy begins a story, one way or another, he's bound to see it through.

Listen to Colonel Rutherford's Colt, narrated by Robertson Dean, on your smartphone, notebook or desktop computer.

Genres: Mystery

Audiobook

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Brief biographies are, like history texts, too organized to be other than orderly misrepresentations of the truth. So when it's written that Lucius Shepard was born in August of 1947 to Lucy and William Shepard in Lynchburg, Virginia, and raised thereafter in Daytona Beach, Florida, it provides a statistical hit and gives you nothing of the difficult childhood from which he frequently attempted to escape, eventually succeeding at the age of fifteen, when he traveled to Ireland aboard a freighter and thereafter spent several years in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, working in a cigarette factory in Germany, in the black market of Cairo's Khan al Khalili bazaar, as a night club bouncer in Spain, and in numerous other countries at numerous other occupations. On returning to the United States, Shepard entered the University of North Carolina, where for one semester he served as the co-editor of the Carolina Quarterly. Either he did not feel challenged by the curriculum, or else he found other pursuits more challenging. Whichever the case, he dropped out several times and traveled to Spain, Southeast Asia (at a time when tourism there was generally discouraged), and South and Central America. He ended his academic career as a tenth-semester sophomore with a heightened political sensibility, a fairly extensive knowledge of Latin American culture and some pleasant memories.

Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits.

In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.

Reviews

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well...not a bad read. There is a little bit for most people whether you like mysteries, thrillers or even supernatural reads (though that's a very, very small thing here and is only what I'd call a taste).

Our main characters are a Native American woman and her...significant other and the tale revolves around their interaction with the widow of a well know white supremacist. Colonel Rutherford is a bit of a hero to his racist followers and it's very, very important to his second in command that he end up with the Colonel's Colt...and also his widow apparently.

I won't go any further as there are a couple of fairly unique plot twists and the book mostly holds up. I found it frequently somewhat mediocre but all in all it held my interest. I think it may appeal most readers in the groups I mentioned above. Maybe try it yourself.

[Syntactical Disruptorize · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first became aware of Shepard's work in the late 1980's, in the pages of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. No two of his stories were alike in anything but the richness of the language, the compelling plots, and the utterly authentic characters.

I promptly forgot all about him until recently, when a fellow member of the local Perl programming scene recommended his works. He has not published many books, maybe ten all told, but if this one is anything to go by, I'm buying the other nine.

The protagonists are an embittered Native American woman and her hazy white boyfriend with a genius for telling stories. They sell collectible guns, and apparently his reaction to each gun is the basis for the stories he invents. Their latest acquisition is a Colt 1911 last wielded by an American white power leader who died in a Federal raid.

As the couple try to sell this gruesome memento, the story begins to interact with the increasingly violent machinations of the bidders for the pistol, and at times the reader wonders: Is the man's story the real history of the gun, back when it was made? Is he delusional? Is he allowing real events to shape the story, and what happens when he slips in and out of the story in his daily experience?

Fantastic read. It's not about guns. It's not about white power movements. It's something very, very different.

[Inna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would call it a "western noir", written in a very original manner. All characters are bright and images are vivid. I really recommend it for those who don't ask questions like "What is the message of a book?" and read and enjoy its beauty and horrors. The style of a book reminds of a magic realism, which allows you to see unusual things in our everyday life.

[Julian White · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short novel - interestingly different development and the ending was somewhat unexpected.