Zeke and Ned is a western in which Larry McMurtry works his magic, as he did in his magnificent, Pulitzer-Prize-winning Lonesome Dove series, in capturing the essence of life during America’s more rustic years. In this case, he and his co-author fictionalize true events that occurred the early 1870’s in western Arkansas and Oklahoma’s Indian Territory, specifically events centered around two Native American men. Ezekiel Proctor (1831-1907), is a mixed blood Cherokee who, as a child, survived the brutal Trail of Tears. He is a distinguished man who fought on the Union side during the Civil War, then served as a marshal, sheriff, and senator of the Cherokee Nation. Edward (Ned) Christie (1852-1892) is the son of Trail of Tears survivors. A gunsmith and gunsmith, he too served as a senator of the Cherokee Nation. Both are flawed, though essentially good men, devoted fathers, and loving husbands.
Zeke and Ned follows these two men and their intertwined lives (Ned marries Jewel, Zeke’s eldest daughter) beginning when Zeke accidentally kills his latest extra-marital lover, Polly Beck, the wife of a White man. This is the inciting incident for a string of events that ranges from tragic to comic, noble to pathetic, tender to vicious as the Beck brothers demand justice and the US Government gets involved. The novel deals with heavy themes such as bigotry against Native Americans including burning of their homesteads, rape, and murder by US marshals who are far worse criminals than those they are deputized to hunt down as well as the US’s attitude that Native Americans need to be governed by Whites, and the inevitable pursuit of America’s Manifest Destiny. The violence grows in intensity from the initial accidental killing to a full-fledged military siege of a fort Ned builds to protect his family after his wife is beaten and raped.
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Zeke and Ned (Simon & Schuster, December 3, 2002) is available through:
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