A Killing in New Town

by Kate Horsley, Kate Horlsey

Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, nineteenth-century edge of the future. Fear, greed, and real estate turn the windmill into a hanging tree. Each train into this booming railroad town unloads a cargo of carpetbaggers, entrepreneurs, seekers, Civil War veterans, and strong, lonely women--like Eliza Pelham. Good mother, drunk and unfaithful wife, Eliza stands at this juncture of raw change and random justice, caught in a reality of callousness and redemption. As Eliza searches for her stolen children, she discovers three allies: an Irish saloon girl, an Apache man who reads Melville, and La Llorona, the weeping mother, fierce in a black dress, thousands of years old.

275 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1996

About the author

Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1952, Kate Horsley Parker, the youngest of five children, loved to read. Her mother, Alice Horsley Parker, inspired that love, which is part of the reason that she chose to write under her mother’s maiden name. In her mother’s world, young women were to be educated and refined and passionate. While in a private girl’s school in Virginia during the sixties, Horsley protested against the Vietnam War and worked in the Civil Rights movement. And then she went off to college and off to Paris for summer school. Every event in life was marked by a book, an almost prophetic glimpse into what would become a passion. After reading a book by Alan Watts, Horsley’s flirtation with Zen Buddhism became a lifelong fling. Flying to Paris, she read Black Elk Speaks, one of several works on or by Native Americans that inspired her to move to the West. It was her Masters Thesis work on Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Silko that propelled her to travel to New Mexico where she has lived since 1977. She got a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. The research she did on women in the American West inspired her to make novels out of the dimly known but awesome lives of ordinary people in extraordinary times. Horsley has been teaching college English in New Mexico for over twenty years and is involved in hospice work.

Horsley dedicated her first published novel to her mother, and the other five to her son Aaron, who died at the age of eighteen in 2000.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books I wish I had a bookgroup to discuss with. A book I want to start new shelves for. Kate Horsley could write a dead horse back to life. There is so much here. Just analyzing the title could take a half hour. So many different kinds of killings? Which one is she talking about? The 3 way culture clash- that could last an hour. THe whole thing about looking or not looking. As good as the Pagan nun.

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare historical novel that is true to both the history and to the characters and their stories.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminded me of the book “Lonesome Dove” because they both describe life in the 1800’s in the west as hostile, desolate and dismal….so much so that people all go crazy, do cruel things or are borderline neurotic. The book is set in New Town, New Mexico which based on the descriptions has to be Las Vegas. It felt like a pretty accurate description of what it would have been like for the characters at that time and was written intentionally to feel discombobulated and a little out of kilter. I found myself thinking that the main character was acting very bizarre and that everyone in the town was against her and her family and in cahoots with the bad guy. It also reminded me of the Willa Cather books about life on the Nebraska prairie during the same time period, stifling, stuck, depressing, difficult, overpowering loneliness and despair. The ending is a bit out there but made up some for the awful things that occurred in the story.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange book, but one that made me just stop and say wow a few times. Some of the descriptions I don’t think I will ever forget, and I just have to say, poor Bridie, she deserved better.

[Michaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the Wild West of New Mexico. Love how the author has a less than perfect yet sympathetic mother protagonist. Technically the story of a murder but the author has a deft touch that makes this story about much, much more. Again the collision of three unique souls (the mom, an Indian, an Irish girl) and the bonds formed. Highly recommend. I like an author that can make me feel uncomfortable.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found myself incredibly frustrated by the uselessness of the main character as she flops ineffectually through the narrative. Granted, the time in which the story is set was unkind and unfair to women, and a real woman would have likely been treated as dismissively as Eliza is in the story. But this is fiction, and I am sorely disappointed in the lack of strong female badassery. This could have been such a good story otherwise.

[Lindi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great novel about living intentionally -- choosing to look, choosing to act. I loved Eliza, her discontent and her openness. And poor doomed Bridie. And Ruthie who learns to be strong. Thank you, Jane!

[Katy Lovejoy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Weird