Synopses & Reviews
An epic that spans a crucial period of American westward expansion, Not Between Brothers is the bloody and gripping tale of the birth of the Lone Star State. Comprising a large cast of characters that includes memorable historical figures such as Stephen Austin and Sam Houston, the novel unfolds through the eyes and experience of Remy Fuqua, an orphan whose understanding of his fellow man is almost as great as his predilection for battle and his fierce national pride. When he marries a well-born Tejana, Beatriz Amarante de la Cruz, Fuqua is tempted to abandon the world he comes from until a tragic loss catapults him straight to the front lines in the battle for Texan independence-the landmark battle of San Jacinto.
Not Between Brothers is also the story of the fearless Comanche warrior Kills White Bear, whose distrust of the white man turns to enmity when a virulent smallpox plague brought by white traders wipes out his family and decimates his people. His vendetta eventually and inexorably makes Remy his greatest enemy. As the two men stalk each other across the Texas prairie, their struggle pits nation against nation, husband against wife and, unforgettably, brother against brother.
Synopsis
This fifteenth anniversary edition of David Wilkinson's bloody and gripping first novel, Not Between Brothers, spans a crucial period of American westward expansion into the Lone Star State. The book vividly captures the risks involved in staking claim to a frontier already owned by another people and the forces that helped transform Texas from a depository for undesirables into the most fiercely contested territory of its time.
About the Author
Foreword writer Don Graham is the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of American and English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles, including Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire, Lone Star Literature: A Texas Anthology, and Literary Austin. He is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly.David Marion Wilkinson, a fifth-generation Arkansan, has lived in Texas since 1972. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1980 with a Bachelor's degree in English. The author has worked as a carpenter, mortgage loan officer, an investigator for a civil trial firm, in the oil fields of Texas, Louisiana, Saudi Arabia and the North Sea, as a part-time ranch hand in Texas's Big Bend, and occasional hunting guide in the Texas Hill Country. For nearly four years, he was also the writer-in-residence for Sul Ross State University. Wilkinson's second novel, The Empty Quarter, draws upon his experiences in the North Sea and Saudi Arabia. His short story, Opening Day, won the Western Writers of America 2000 Spur Award for Best Western Short Fiction. His third novel, Oblivion's Altar, won the 2003 Spur Award for Best Original Paperback and was selected as a finalist for the 2003 Oklahoma Book Awards. Wilkinson cowrote One Ranger: A Memoir with retired Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson. Now in its tenth printing, One Ranger: A Memoir has become the fastest-selling book in the history of the University of Texas Press. Wilkinson is currently at work on a historical novel set in West Texas in the 1950s. Afterword writer William J. Scheick, PhD, is J. R. Millikan Centennial Professor of English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written several award-winning academic books and works of fiction and is a contributing editor to Texas Gardener Magazine.
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