The Bullet Meant for Me

by Jan Reid

On April 20, 1998, Jan Reid was shot during a robbery in Mexico City, where he had gone to watch his friend, the boxer Jesus Chavez, fight. In The Bullet Meant for Me, Reid powerfully recounts his ordeal, the long chain of life events that brought him to that fateful attack, and his struggle to regain the ability to walk and to be a full partner in a deeply satisfying marriage. Re-examining the whole trajectory of his life, Reid questions how much the Texan ideal of manhood shaped his identity, including his love for boxing and participation in the sport. He meditates on male friendship as he tells the story of his close relationship with Chavez, whose career and personal travails Reid details with empathy and insight. And he describes his long months in physical therapy, during which he drew on the unwavering love of his wife and daughter, as well as the courage and strength he had learned from boxing, to heal his body and spirit. A moving, intimate portrait of a man, a friendship, and a marriage, The Bullet Meant for Me is Jan Reid's most personal book.

285 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Jan Reid has written for Texas Monthly, Esquire, GQ, Slate, Men’s Journal, Garden & Gun, and the New York Times. Reid received the Lon Tinkle career achievement award from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2014. His twelve books include The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, The Bullet Meant for Me, Rio Grande, Comanche Sundown, and Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards. The biography of the late Texas governor won praise from Bill Clinton to the Washington Post to the Economist, and the Houston Chronicle cited it as one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2012. Let the People In won two awards from the Texas State Historical Association, for 2012 book of the year and co-winner of the award for best book on women in Texas history. It also received a nonfiction book of the year award from the Philosophical Society of Texas. His prior book, the novel Comanche Sundown, was awarded best fiction 2011 by the Texas Institute of Letters, an award that has previously gone to Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. Reid's Texas Tornado: The Times and Music of Doug Sahm, was an Oxford Magazine Music Book of the Year in 2010. Reid’s fiction and non-fiction have also won awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN Southwest, and the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; his short fiction has appeared in Northern Liberties Review and the anthologies On the Brink and Texas Short Stories, his nonfiction in The Best of Texas Monthly, The Slate Diaries, twice in Best American Sportswriting, and most recently in Curiosity's Cats: Writers and Research. He is at work on a new novel titled Sins of the Younger Sons and a novella, The Song Leader, that is related in one of its settings to his first novel, Deerinwater. Reid grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, and has lived in or near Austin since 1970.

Reviews

[Shea Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was very intersecting because it is a true story about a boxer who gets kidnapped in Mexico and is forced to fight. Throughout the story he tells us all of his backstory and interesting facts about him.

[Jennine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who would have thought I’d enjoy a book with a boxing background?? (A note to the author- I grew up 25 miles south of Wichita Falls and know where Blue Grove and all those little towns are located!)

A very well told story.

[Lynette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very thorough, interesting account of the author's encounter with a thief in Mexico City, one which very nearly ended his life. Reid writes for Texas Monthly and I had read bits and pieces of the tale before this, but the book was good in that it also talked about peripheral ideas surrounding that fateful night; what it means to be male in a situation such as his, whether his response was fool-hearty or brave, conquering fear, schooling oneself to separate the incident from the city itself and the citizens of Mexico City -- on and on. It was also a picture of boxing I had never seen before. The book made me wish I could meet the boxer whose match Reid was in town to watch when he was accosted. Good read.

[Carly K · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're interested in gender, Texas, boxing, or immigration politics, this is a worthwhile read. It's more about some of those things than others, but it touches on all of them and it's a really stirring memoir.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review at my blog.