Bent Red Moon: A Western Story

by Russ Hall

The Texas hill country in the 1870s was as close to a cauldron of devil's stew as you could find. The Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes have banded together. Rebel soldiers, resentful of the way in which they have been treated, have begun rustling cattle. Amid this seething unrest rides seventeen-year-old Mick, without a gun, impoverished and half starved. Mick is fortunate when he meets Syd, a Mexican girl, on the trail. Faced by a land as harsh as cactus and mesquite stickers, and as poisonous as the bite of a rattler, an alliance seems to their advantage. But neither is prepared for the violence and danger that threaten from every side. Born in Colorado, Russ Hall lives in Texas hill country. Beginning with Harper & Row, he worked as an editor for over twenty-five years with major publishing firms. He has eight previously published books, primarily mysteries. He has also published numerous short stories and was winner of the Nancy Pickard Fiction Award.

243 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Russ Hall is author of more than thirty-five books and coauthor of numerous other books. He has been an editor for major publishing companies, ranging from Harper & Row (now HarperCollins), Simon & Schuster, to Pearson. In 2011, he was awarded the Sage Award, by The Barbara Burnett Smith Mentoring Authors Foundation—a Texas award for the mentoring author who demonstrates an outstanding spirit of service in mentoring, sharing and leading others in the mystery writing community. He lives in Lago Vista, on the north shore of Lake Travis near Austin, where he hikes, fishes, and tends a herd of deer that visit daily to peep in the office window and help with the writing.

Reviews

[Jeff Tankersley · Rating 3 out of 5]

We drop into the middle of our protagonist's wanderings in 1873 Texas. He's a 17-year old named Mick Dixon who had been captured by Sioux as a child, then stolen by Cheyenne, then rescued by US soldiers, and now Mick is looking for a distant relation named Bill Hinton. On the plains, Mick meets a 16-year old girl named Syd who coincidentally has her own reasons for seeking out this Bill Hinton character; he's the man who murdered her mother.

Verdict: "Bent Red Moon" (2005) is a good but flawed modern western in ways that we see in a lot of modern westerns. It has immersive environmental descriptions, tense interactions with some interesting characters during the journey, Mick and Syd's difficulties traveling the plains and struggling to survive while learning to trust each other, but then deal with some cartoonishly-bad bad guys and a weak final third.

Jeff's Rating: 3 / 5 (Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: R

[Curt Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suppose I am biased to a degree being related to Russ by a couple of marriages and several generations. That said, this is a great read and one that propels me to make this author my reading list of choice during summer vacation.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met Russ Hall, the author, when I was in Texas for Hurricane Katrina. The book is quite good, with a genuine feeling of place and I felt like all the historical details were very well handled.