Mike Kearby’s new Western for young adults isn’t filled with the clichés that make the genre what it is. In THE LAST RENEGADE, you’ll find no cattle drives, land barons, rapacious railroads, gunfights on the street in front of the saloon, or dewy-eyed school marms in this one. There is an Indian, however — Young-Man-Who-Listens — and he’s the title character.
He’s shot and captured as an adolescent. and sold to a traveling tent show to be displayed as Chief Raging Buffalo, The Last Real Renegade Indian, a bloodthirsty savage with more scalps to his credit than Pawnee Bill has circus posters. The only education he receives in the ways of the white man is the brutal treatment he is accorded by his captors. He picks up the language to the extent he hears it regularly from the men who care for him. Or don’t care for him, as the case may be.
This is happening in the Texas of 1877. Slavery went out with Abe Lincoln, but no one gives a penny damn about a Comanche kid; most think that a cage is a better home than he deserves. The public lays its dimes on the counter, gasps, shudders, and then passes on to the next exotic treat.
Two years expire and the show arrives in the town of Eagle Pass, a city that lauds the local minister for his ownership of the springs that emit a miracle water, guaranteed to cure what ails you, from bronchitis to ingrown toenails. But the minister is not all he pretends to be. In fact, he’s nothing like what he pretends to be. And his relationship to Young-Man-Who-Listens, along with the courage of a couple of local kids, will change several lives.
Kearby doesn’t slack off when it comes to the adventure anyone would expect from a traditional Western. He provides the reader with a dash of historical lore, some local color, a bit of violence — most of which is offstage — and protagonists who do the right thing even at the cost of their comfortable way of life. Young readers will find Jake Miller and his female pal Marty to be realistically drawn adolescents. The Western town setting is sketched in enough to make all clear to anyone who is not as familiar with the Old West as we old-timers are.
Kearby is a retired high school English teacher. He provides a glossary of unfamiliar words and phrases, and explains the historical incident that served as his initial inspiration. There are even a few pages dedicated to the symbolism in the novel, and a list of discussion questions for those who want to delve into moral meaning.
Don’t let that English teacher stuff put you off. The book is mainly an adventure story and its moral lessons go down easily. It’s a good read for the young hard-to-get-‘em-interested-in-a-book crowd. —Doug Bentin
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