Takedown: Taming John Wesley Hardin - Dale Chase

[PaperMoon]

I was a little nervous trying out this new author (to me) ... she's touted as having written a lot of male erotica and I wasn't sure how that would influence this western historical work.

First off - there's definitely gay sex - consensual for the most part (and non-consensual in a couple of instances) - the author writes gay erotica well and in a masculine rough and hard sense given the setting. Readers who are a little jaded with M-M sex can always skip the passages (I did some).

This book works for me as a fictionalised historical. Notorious Texan badass legendary outlaw figure John Wesley Hardin (who's wanted for a lot of manslaughter) is introduced by the author as a MC when he get's incarcerated to serve hos sentence of 25 years at Huntsville Prison. There he meets Garland Quick who is of similar age and also serving 25 years for killing one man in a robbery gone-wrong.

What follows is a steady expose of how two men drawn from different walks of life come together to form a relationship of sorts - one gay and one straight. There's nothing insta about the friendship and bond that gets built between Wes and Garland. The best thing about this book is how easily I was drawn into the closed-world and regimented prison life where the plot is entirely set. From abusive and sadistic prison guards and management, predatory life-term killers, young and fragile youths, lecherous physicians, double-crossing, horny and opportunistic wardens and inmates ... the detail and characters sprang to life from the page and I became quite immersed in the oft-times brutal, claustrophobic and bleak world of Huntsville Prison of the last two decades of the nineteeth century.

Periods of relative calm involving work in prison industries and self-improvement with studies are alternated with the excitement of prison breakouts, traumas of retributive punishment and of course the excitement of man-on-man sex taken wherever possible. The phenomenon of situational homosexual sex is rather well done - Hardin is particularly conflicted with this given his religious background as well as his loyalty of wife and children outside. And the author gives a poignant voice to Garland as to what it means to fall for a straight man who's hellbent of securing his freedom back to his life as it was before.

Readers wanting a HEA ending should be forewarned that the ending is predictable insofar as the plot closely follows Hardin's fate in real life; a realistic but bittersweet tale. Aside from the sex (and I guess incarcerated men do engage in sexual practices to work out their angst and frustrations and anger) - I thought this an enlightening and engaging historical three and half star read. But I can accept that this will not be everyone's 'cup of tea'.

I am however seriously considering getting the author's other work - Wyatt: Doc Holliday's Account of an Intimate Friendship