Ever been stabbed in the back by someone you trusted? Betrayed by a jealous friend? Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened to notorious outlaw Jesse James.
It was a hot day, and James arrived home feeling carefree. His daughter was waiting for him and when he reached her, he picked her up and twirled her in the air. The Ford brothers, longtime friends of his, accompanied him into the house. The three eased comfortably into a casual conversation in the sitting room. Little did James know, the two were conspiring against him. As soon as James unstrapped his guns and turned his head, the brothers knew it was time. “Then Robert Ford’s .44 ignited and a red stamp seemed to paste against the outlaw’s chestnut brown hair one inch to the rear of his right ear.”
In a matter of seconds, James was dead, shot in the back of the head by his trusted confidant. Talk about betrayal.
It is no wonder that The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Fordis Ron Hansen’s most highly acclaimed novel. You almost want to scream at James, “Turn around!” Hansen’s novel exposes the inner workings of gang superiority and ambition. Ford knew that he was in James’s shadow, and he was sick of it. He wanted to be James, and Hansen paints the picture perfectly.
Written with similar enthusiasm is the compelling Desperadoes, in which Hansen takes on the voice of infamous outlaw Emmett Dalton, the last surviving member of the Dalton gang from the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries. When he was released after fourteen years in prison, Dalton was forced to sell the rights to his story to Hollywood bigwig William Selig in order to make a living. Hansen’s retelling of Dalton’s story is so convincing that Desperadoes almost seems autobiographical.
Ron Hansen’s novels are utterly believable and captivating. His writing is so persuasive that you might forget that he isn’t actually an outlaw from the Old West.
Ron Hansen has written eight novels, two collections of stories, and a book of essays. He has been nominated for numerous literary awards including the PEN/Faulkner Award, for which two of his books have been finalists. His novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was adapted into a movie. He currently lives with his wife in Northern California, and is a professor at Santa Clara University.