Hell on the Border: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book Two

by Sidney Thompson

Overview

Set in 1884, Hell on the Border tells the story of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves at the peak of his historic career. Famous for being a crack shot as well as for his nonviolent tendencies, Reeves uses his African American race to his strategic advantage. Along with a tramp or cowboy disguise, Reeves appears so nonthreatening that he often positions himself close enough to the outlaws he is pursuing to arrest them without bloodshed.

After a series of heroic feats of capturing and killing infamous outlaws—most notably Jim Webb—and an introduction to Belle Starr, Reeves finds himself in the Fort Smith jail, charged with murder. This second book in the Bass Reeves Trilogy investigates what really happened when Reeves made the greatest mistake of his life on the heels of his greatest achievements.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496220318
Publisher:	UNP - Bison Books
Publication date:	04/01/2021
Series:	Bass Reeves Trilogy , #2
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	224,885
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Sidney Thompson teaches creative writing and African American literature at Texas Christian University. He is the author of Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book One (Bison Books, 2020), You/Wee: Poems from a Father, and Sideshow: Stories, winner of Foreword Magazine’s Silver Award for Short Story Collection of the Year.
 

 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Note on Language
Part 1. Before
1. The Coldirons
Part 2. During
2. Tick Tick
3. Tamales
4. Twelve
5. Scrambled Eggs and Brains and Ripe Cantaloupe
6. The Dead Line
7. There Were Cattle
8. Webb Again
9. High Horse
10. Somewhere at Sea
11. Tock Tock
12. A Deeper Darkness
Part 3. After
13. A Wake
14. A Tail
15. A Hole
16. The Blackness
17. A Case
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

Hell on the Border imaginatively reclaims the life of pioneering African American U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves. . . . This may be a book set in the historical past, but it contains stories and lessons we should contemplate today.”—W. Ralph Eubanks, author of The House at the End of the Road
 
 

W. Ralph Eubanks

In Sidney Thompson’s hands, this story of a remarkable life shows us that Oklahoma was always Indigenous land, Black lives have always mattered, and the white supremacy that seeks to squash Black brilliance still must be destroyed. With masterful structure, pacing, and language, this historical fiction reveals the truth of our present moment. . . . If you finished the first book desperate to see Bass Reeves free, in this book you will watch him become legendary, and you’ll end this novel dying to know what happens next.”—Erin Stalcup, author of Every Living Species

Erin Stalcup

A finely calibrated trilogy about a subject who couldn’t be more necessary to our moment. The voice with which Thompson pursues Bass Reeves, at once austere and ornamented by its historical circumstances, is just one of the book’s many enviable achievements.”—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
 

Kevin Brockmeier