The Industry of Souls by Martin Booth
This historical novel traces the storied paths of Bat Masterson, Billy Dixon, and Quanah Parker, all in their youth, along with the grizzled Amos Chapman as they come to Adobe Walls and Buffalo Wallow in 1874. The author has meticulously woven threads of fiction into a fabric of fact. While the men of this story possess an enigmatic and exhilarating quality, it is the women who are truly the compelling and mesmerizing characters, from Molly Brennan and Kate Elder in the saloons of Sweetwater, to the heroic Hanna Olds of Adobe Walls. The fictional Nettie Mae is a unique and unexpected heroine. From its beginnings and primitive Sweetwater, Texas to its gratifying summary conclusions, Who Be Dragons is intellectually stimulating and vibrantly satisfying.
Booth, Martin: - Martin Booth (1944-2004) was a British novelist and poet. He also worked as a teacher and screenwriter, and founded the Sceptre Press. He was born in Lancashire, but was brought up mainly in Hong Kong, which he left for Britain in 1964. He first made his name as a poet and as a publisher, producing slim volumes by British and American poets. His own books of verse include the two Knotting books collected here, as well as Killing the Moscs and Meeting the Snowy North Again. In the late 1970s Booth turned mainly to writing fiction. His first successful novel, Hiroshima Joe, was published in 1985, and contains passages set in that city during the Second World War. His lifelong interest in observing and studying wildlife resulted in a book about his childhood hero Jim Corbett, a big-game hunter and expert on man-eating tigers, and also a subsequent study of the endangered rhino. Later non-fiction books included a remarkable guide to Hong Kong, The Dragon and the Pearl, as well as biographies of Aleister Crowley and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. While his successful early novels tended to reflect his own past in an Africa and Asia touched by the British Empire, his later books reflected his interest in European locations, such as Italy, which features in the novel A Very Private Gentleman (1990, later filmed as The American, starring George Clooney in 2010). His penultimate novel, Industry of Souls, was set in Russia and was shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize. He died of cancer in 2004, shortly after completing Gweilo (released as Golden Boy in the USA), a memoir of his Hong Kong childhood written for his own children.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780312267537 |
| ISBN 10 | 0312267533 |
| Title | The Industry of Souls |
| Author | Martin Booth |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Year published | 2000-10-06 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |