Book on Jim Bowie

With all of the Bowie Knife fans here, I thought that I would let you all know of a book that I just found. It is "Bowie: A Novel of the Life of Jim Bowie" by Randy Lee Eickhoff and Leonard C. Lewis. I haven't read it as yet, but it looks interesting and I thought that others might like to know about it.

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller

[This message has been edited by FullerH (edited 02-15-2000).]
 
Jake Evans

Jake Evans

Joined
Dec 13, 1999
Messages
1,729
Can you tell us the publisher and if you got it online and from where. I want a copy too.

Jake
 
Publisher is Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 0-812-57784-1

I checked and it is available from Amazon in paper and hard bound, although I bought it from a local store.

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller
 
Hugh, I know you said you haven't read it yet, but do you know if they mean it's all fiction when they say "Novel"?
I'm fasinated by Jim Bowie because of the knife of course. I still haven't seen "The Iron Mistrss" with Alan Ladd, and would love to read a good book about him. Seems like the facts on Bowies life are pretty sketchy, as well as what the knife looked like. Would you be so kind as to post a review after reading it? TIA
 
PhilL, I intend to do so as soon as I finish the book that I am reading, "Colonization: Down to Earth" by Harry Turtledove. I would expect that, from a quick look, the authors have taken the known facts and fleshed them out with a story. Eickhoff has also written other books on the Alamo and on Doc Holliday, so my guess is that he has some knowledge of history, I hope. I'll keep you all posted.

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller
 
OK, I've started the book. The conceit is that a man, A. J. Sowell, born in Texas in 1848, decides to write a biography of a family friend, Jim Bowie. He interviews Jim's friends and family and gathers all kinds of articles and other data. Now, the problem is that I have absolutely no way of knowing the accuracy of any of this. If any of you have read the recent editions of Michael Crichton's "Eaters of the Dead", the book upon which the movie "The Thirteenth Warrior" was based, you may remember that he says in a note that he cannot remember where his embroidery of the admixture of Ibn Fadlan and Beowulf begins and the originals leave off. I feel somewhat the same way here. It certainly reads well, though! There are variant descriptions of the Vidalia Sand Bar fight from various view points, and they all carry a degree of verisimilitude, in that the persons to whom they are attributed would likely have seen it that way. Not all are favorable to the Bowie faction. I will give a more complete report later, but it is a very good read!

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller

[This message has been edited by FullerH (edited 02-14-2000).]
 
I've finished the book and I enjoyed it very much. While I cannot vouch for the historical accuracy of all of it, it rings truer than much of what I have read. The piece on James Black is very good and, thankfully, stays away from the romanticism of the movie. "A bit of Heaven and a bit of Hell", if I remember correctly. I would recommend the book to anybody interested in the Jim Bowie story as I feeel that it gives a good view of his life without either romanticizing him as Thorpe did or demonizing him as later articles have done due to his "blackbirding" and dueling. I enjoyed it a lot. On a scale of 10, I'd give it an 8.5, not as history (I am an old history major, so I can be picky), but as historically based fiction. Get a copy all of you Bowie enthusiasts and enjoy!

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Walk in the Light,
Hugh Fuller
 
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