Michael McGarrity

Nothing But Trouble was average. Some good bits, but I found a lot of it fairly mundane.

The book begins with Kevin Kerney meeting up with a weird, former childhood friend who was always a bit of a con artist and hustler. The friend never grew up and out of his grifting way, and it is now his full-time lifestyle. In any case, Kearney gets roped in to some of his shenanigans which was one half of the story. Parts of that were okay, but I felt that there were more questions than answers at the show more summing up.

The other half of the story centered on Sara Brannon, Kerney's wife, and her Army career. I have kind of come to the conclusion that I don't really care for the Sara Brannon character. Plus, I felt like the first quarter or so of the book was endless cheerleading for law enforcement and the military. In this day and age when US law enforcement is literally executing US citizens on their own streets, and the US military continues to engage in endless wars of aggression, let's just say that the rah-rah stuff can get pretty annoying, the championing of. Although the dark side of all of that, both law enforcement and military, also gets exposed later in the book.

Anyway, Sara gets shipped off to Ireland on a secret assignment, and that is the part of the book I liked most. Specifically Detective Inspector Hugh Fitzmaurice. Their investigation in Dublin was quite good, and Fitzmaurice was a total stud. Unfortunately, most of the happenings related to the Irish half of the book got dropped off at the end.

And that was kind of the whole deal. There were two stories going on, and all kinds of drama with Kerney crisscrossing from northern New Mexico to far southwestern New Mexico to the eastern US. And Sara was bouncing between the eastern US, northern New Mexico, Ireland and Iraq. Just a shitload of stuff going on, and kind of a ho-hum bust at the end. It was more a weird month or so long timeline of drama in Kerney's life, with a few bits of crime and action thrown in. show less

Michael McGarrity's family saga of the American West ends with The Last Ranch, a novel that carries the Kerney family to near the end of the Vietnam War and to the adulthood of Kevin Kerney whose family history was the focus of Hard Country, Backlands, and The Last Ranch. Kevin Kerney is the main character in a series of mysteries and this trilogy was written to ground him and his family in the history of New Mexico. Screen Shot 2016-05-09 at 10.38.57 AM

This final novel begins near the end show more of World War II when Matthew Kerney comes home wounded from the war. There is a rapprochement with his father as they settle into ranching and he finds a way to move forward after losing his eye in Italy.

Much of the novel is spent on the hardships, ups and downs and struggles of ranching and the family's long conflict with the U.S. Army which was determined to annex their 7 Bar K ranch to what was to become the White Sands Missile Range. Some might be tempted to seek comparisons between the Kerney's and their neighbors' struggle with the Army and the current Buddy family standoffs with the Bureau of Land Management. They may even be thinking McGarrity is making an argument on behalf of the Bundys.

They would be wrong. The Kerneys and Mr. Prather (a neighbor who successfully fought annexation) owned their land and were fighting eminent domain. The Bundys grazed their cattle on public lands without paying for it. The Kerneys pioneered soil conservation methods to avoid overgrazing. The Bundys overgrazed land, destroying and degrading public lands with reckless disregard for basic conservation ethics. Their ranching ethos and methods are diametric opposites and I imagine the Kerneys, if they were real people, would feel contempt for the Bundys.

But that is not the focus on this novel. Instead, the story is about how the land shapes the people who live there, people who must have a certain kind of grit and steadiness. New Mexico is not gentle pastoral land. It is hard, extreme, and unforgiving. It takes people who can hunker down and endure, who can adapt and evolve, people like the Kerneys. The land shapes their character and they bond with the land, as tied to it as to each other.

The Last Ranch is dense with the quotidian details of life. With finals and honor rolls, burgers and fries, gardening, cooking, fencing, and just living life–not always with high drama, often just the simple living of it. Much of Kevin's story is just growing up, fighting bullies, getting his heart broken by feckless girl friends and simply becoming a man. Describing it, it sounds boring, but it is not. It is moving and powerful because you care about these people, you know them now. They are like neighbors whose struggles and victories you have celebrated your whole life. You've invested generations into this family, you want them to be good people with good lives.

I enjoyed The Last Ranch very much. The entire series was a joy to read. While the first two are much "easier" to like because they are more outside my own lifetime and experience, The Last Ranch earns so much respect for its honesty and the courage to write a big story of small things.

I received an e-galley of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley.

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Michael McGarrity is known for his crime thriller/procedurals that follow Kevin Kerney, a throw-back western lawman from New Mexico. McGarrity was himself a sheriff’s deputy in New Mexico for a time before pursuing a career in writing. Since making the switch to full time novelist, McGarrity has published 12 Kerney books, and the first of those, [Tularosa], was nominated for the Anthony Award for mystery writers and novels.

After finishing the last novel, McGarrity pitched his editor on show more the concept of an Old West history of New Mexico centered around Kerney’s ancestors. Over the course of the series, McGarrity has provided quite a bit of color and back-story to Kerney with family stories about the family ranch in the Tularosa basin. But McGarrity wanted to explore those stories set on a deeper level and set against the backdrop of the history of the Old West in the New Mexico territories. [Hard Country], the first in a trilogy, is that story.

John Kerney, an Irish immigrant, settles on the gritty plains of West Texas. His wife dies in childbirth and his brother and nephew are murdered for their horses. John gives his new-born son to his sister-in-law to raise and sets out to New Mexico to work as a cow hand. When he receives word that his sister-in-law is working as a prostitute and threatening to give the child up to strangers, he scours the small cattle and mining towns for the boy. Once he finds the boy, Patrick Kerney, he carves out a horse and cattle ranch in the rugged mountains of the Tularosa Basin. Patrick grows into a troubled young man, tamed only when he marries an independent and free-thinking young woman, Emma. Patrick and Emma bear two children, CJ and Matthew, as they break against each other through a turbulent and passionate marriage. As the book closes, Patrick and Emma are on the verge of reconciliation, Patrick agreeing to live a more honorable and responsible life in exchange for a part in his youngest son’s life.

Through the epic story, covering the time between 1875 and the First World War, McGarrity sprinkles in much of New Mexico’s rich and complex history. Indian policy and displacement, range wars, and boom towns all play a part in the story. Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett make appearances. The mysterious and infamous murder of Albert Jennings Fountain, a prominent politician, and his son are featured. And the vast and colorful landscape of New Mexico is centerpiece to this Old West, hard-scrabble tale of blood and survival.

First the good, and there’s a lot of it here. McGarrity knows New Mexico intimately. Yes, the book is thoroughly and exhaustively researched to cover all of the important pieces of the development of the territory. But that’s not what I’m talking about. McGarrity knows the land, the landscape, and the people, down deep. Every character, every description, every line of dialog drips with an authenticity achieved only through breathing the same sweet, high-desert air, eating the same chili-infused food, and walking in the dusty footprints of the men and women who scratched this state out of the clay and granite. I defy you to read this book and not taste the dust in your mouth, not smell the sweet mesquite air after a rain, and not feel the sun baking every drop of moisture out of your body.

Next, the characters. These cowboys walked straight off the pages of Wister’s [The Virginian] and Schaefer’s [Shane]. This is a story of the Old West that isn’t prettied up with supernatural gun-play or cardboard cutout good vs. evil stories. These men and women are as complex and hard as the land they inhabit, capable of changing directions like a thunderhead crawling across the high plains. They are equal parts noble and dangerous, companionable and lonely. They are equal to the land they try to tame, even as it kills them day by day.

Finally, McGarrity has created a compelling and eminently readable story. This is the kind of book that you hope is re-producing as you read, so that there are as many pages yet to read as those you’ve just finished consuming.

The only criticism I have for the book is in wanting more. McGarrity is clearly capable of writing full characters and authentically evoking the land around them. But as rich as McGarrity as made his descriptions of New Mexico, he could afford to turn that same eye to the inward lives of his characters. Too often I closed the book wondering what the characters might be thinking or how they were motivated. Their actions and lives are never inexplicable but McGarrity is a little stingy with any such discussions. That said, even with less than fully realized inner lives, McGarrity’s stories and characters are a joy to read.

Bottom Line: A richly and extravagantly constructed authentic story of the Old West and New Mexico.

4 ½ bones!!!! show less

There are too few great Western novels, so I am glad to discover Michael McGarrity’s Hard Country. It begins with ruthless urgency with the death in childbirth of John Kerney’s wife Mary Alice and the murder of his brother and nephew by rustlers. His son Patrick is sent off in the care of his newly bereaved aunt Ida while John Kerney heads off in search of work and revenge.

However, never fear, this is no Outlaw Josey Wales or Revenant. This is not a revenge story, it’s a family story. show more John lives the cowboy life, traveling from ranch to ranch. His calm good sense earns him friends and respect that reward him all his life. One of them is Cal Doran with whom he buys a ranch while sending letters trying to track down his son who was left in the hands of a doctor and his wife after his sister-in-law died.

This is a story about ranching, about settling New Mexico, about the history of the West. It is rich in texture, with interesting secondary characters as well. I have an old leather-bound copy of Log of a Cowboy and Hard Country has that kind of authenticity.

In Hard Country, we get to know three generations of Kerneys. There is John, his son Patrick whose indomitable wife Emma is an inspiration, and Patrick and Emma’s sons C.J. and Matt. The story begins shortly after the Civil War and ends during World War One.

Hard Country is the first in a three-part family saga following the Kerney family, the ancestors of Kevin Kerney, the main character in a detective series I am adding to my For Later Shelf at the library. I have not read any of the Kevin Kerney novels and that has not been an impediment to being completely engrossed.

I liked Hard Country very much and am eager to read the sequels Backlands and The Last Ranch, which will be released May 17th. There is a strong sense of place, the ranch is a character as hard and enduring as the Kerneys. The author writes with subtly about the relationships between whites and Mexicans and the Apaches. One of the best things, though, is the people are by and large likable. Even the one who can be stupid and self-sabotaging, they are still likable. I cared about them, I cried with them and look forward to the next part of their journey.

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