All The Cowboys Ain't Gone

this was a really unique read, I loved the use of a western setting with a crocodile cult. it was such a unique read and I really enjoyed reading this.

Want to be taken on a wild adventure? Imagine a cross between James Bond and Macgyver, throw in the Wild West and North Africa, and the result will be this book.

"I like gettin' out and see what's stirring with the new day, while it's still fresh and wild, before others get a chance to mar it's newness."

I started reading this book and wasn't sure what to expect. We meet Lincoln Smith, a young man that loses his father to some outlaws in the wild west of Texas in the late 1800s. His father was a role model for Lincoln and he did his best to emulate his father all his life. I have to admit I could relate a little bit to Lincoln and how he did not like things to change. He didn't like the trains coming through his town and definitely did not like the horseless carriages he encountered as a young man. He even says he was born too late and should have been born about 50 years earlier.

Lincoln decides after a Wild West show closes that he is going to join the French Foreign Legion to see places he has only heard of and places he hasn't. We have all heard of this outfit and I have to admit, I really don't know much about them other than they are a military organization. Apparently, this organization still exists and I could find myself going down a rabbit hole reading about the group but stopped myself. Anyway, Lincoln makes his way to France to join up in the early 1900s and meets Jake and John, two men that will have his back more times than he can count. What follows is their adventure.

Lincoln has some crazy good luck throughout the book. He manages to wriggle his way out of tough situations and while it may seem impossible, it is what made this book so fascinating to me. I think Lincoln is a bit naive and could have easily been taken advantage of (and probably was a few times) but luckily he met various characters that took him under their wing and watched out for him.

There is one character that I didn't like at first but came to admire and that is Amanda. She is the daughter of an Ambassador and she is very hard-headed and insists on doing what she wants despite the potential danger. But I think that is what attracts Lincoln to her and there could be a romance brewing but only time will tell.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and once the action really picked up about halfway through the book, I had a hard time putting it down. Sure, some of it may seem impossible but that is the great thing about books, they make the impossible possible and let us imagine a world other than our own.

If you were to look up Grand Adventure in the dictionary, it would probably say, “Read All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone!” The adventure begins on the first page, and it sizzles and snakes along until the very end. I was thoroughly engaged - start to finish!

Our protagonist, Lincoln Smith, is one of those unfortunate individuals who was born too late for his time. Smith relished the adventure of mid-nineteenth century Texas, but it all came and went a few decades before he was born. However, he had the fortitude - and heart - of a man’s man from that era. If there was any way for Dirty Harry and Indiana Jones to breed, the offspring would be Lincoln Smith.

From the very beginning of the story, the author presented Smith as a character who was anti-industry. For example, Smith was totally against the new automobile that made loud noises and was fueled by muddy slime sucked from the earth. He was happy with a horse.

Lincoln Smith takes the reader on an adventure of a lifetime between the covers of this novel. We follow him on a boyhood adventure, and then on to a stint in a traveling Wild West Show. When that closes down, Smith sets his sights on the French Foreign Legion. That’s when the “adventure meter” starts to red-line!

The characters Smith meets on his adventures - both good and bad - play a large part in the story. They don’t really impact Smith, but he surely impacts them - usually in a good way. Regardless, I thought the author did a wonderful job in developing the characters enough to fill the role they played in the story.

In an adventure novel, pacing is critically important. The pacing in this story is right on point. Despite the book’s 300 pages, it seems like a short read because it’s hard to put down. Most of that is due to the pacing.

When Smith goes off to join the Legion, the author takes us to Marseille and then on to North Africa. I felt like the author did extensive research to make this part of the story authentic. From the weaponry to the attire of the harem girls, the description was much appreciated. Further, the author made Smith a fairly learned fellow, and uses him to provide historical backstory when Smith would talk to the other characters about this place or that place.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the story, for me, was seeing what else would happen to our protagonist. I suppose he could be considered very lucky or very unlucky, depending on whether you’re a cup is half full or half empty kind of person. Regardless, Lincoln Smith will keep the reader fully engaged throughout the story.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a taste for adventure, or anyone who just loves reading a good story!

Utterly entertaining, All The Cowboys Ain't Gone had me laughing out loud with the characters' antics and catching my breath with the non-stop action from beginning to end. I can see this made into a movie in the same vein as Indiana Jones and The Mummy.

Having a twelve-year-old son, I found myself taking to Lincoln right away. The opening scenes with his mother admonishing him for his language and supervising his lessons really resonated with me. The great start hooked me into this book that's in a genre I don't normally read.

Mr. Jacobson certainly has a flair for storytelling that's playful and engaging. While I thought the events that happen to Lincoln from Texas to New Hampshire, Florida to New York, France to Algeria, and finally to the fictional Mur highly improbable, I still found myself engrossed in his adventures and delighted with his narrow escapes. It's a tall tale befitting its Texas origins and I had absolutely no problem with that.

I enjoyed meeting the new characters Lincoln encountered, especially Jake and Johnny, Amanda, the Three from Camarón Legionnaires named after Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, and Omar. I even enjoyed the villains even though they're campy and absolutely ridiculous. It's all part of the charm of the book.

Lincoln is easy to root for. At times naïve, he nevertheless has a core of honor and loyalty which makes him perfect for the French Foreign Legion. By the end of the book, he has absolutely learned the lesson his mother taught him when he was a boy:
... though things aren't the way you'd prefer, there are still going to be plenty of adventures; they're just going to be different. You're just going to have to use your imagination to find them."

Hang onto your hats when you open the cover of All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone, because you are in for one heck of a ride! Lincoln Smith is living in the wrong time. He longs for the days of the Wild West, when his now-missing father was one of the best Texas Rangers out there, when there were wide-open spaces, when the cowboy was king. His mother makes sure he gets a proper education, but he longs for a life of adventure, far from the clutter and noise of modern machinery. After his heart is broken, he aims to head off and join the French Foreign Legion, as any adventurous young man would.

I’ve always been a fan of the Indiana Jones movies, and Lincoln has a touch of Indy about him, with a little Clint Eastwood for good measure. He gets into some crazy scrapes, and the story includes hidden passages, a hermit in the desert with a message for him, a crocodile-worshiping cult, and of course, some good ol’ fisticuffs. It might seem like Lincoln has better luck than is reasonably possible, but that’s part of this book’s charm! You just suspend your disbelief, jump into the story, and enjoy.

The good guys are good, the bad guys are clearly bad – no question about who you want to be cheering for. There’s a little sparkle of romance with a strong-willed ambassador’s daughter. After all, it wouldn’t do to have our hero’s heart broken for good. The latter part of the book brings a twist that I DID NOT see coming, and it was glorious. I might have actually teared up a bit when I read it.

And I think a story like this might be just what we need right now. In a world that’s gone mad over the past year or so, a rootin’ tootin’ gun-slingin’ cowboy with a zest for life and a thirst for the epic is a bright spot whose antics we can laugh and cheer and gasp over, simply because it’s fun.

Five shining Texas-sized stars from me!

Hede: A winning combination: 8 books for March from Rick DeStefanis, John J. Jacobson, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Harlan Coben, Dan Gutman, Iain Lawrence, Angeline Boulley and Jess Phoenix

There are about 200,000 books published each year in the United States alone. To pare that down a bit, Mountain Times is spotlighting eight titles — fiction, young adult and nonfiction — that are worthy of attention and are now available in March.

Fiction

‘Rawlins: Last Ride to Montana’ by Rick DeStefanis, The Word Hunter Books, $23.95

The Memphis, Tenn.-native Rick DeStefanis, a former paratrooper with the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, is a master of military fiction who has lived most of his life in northern Mississippi — all information that gives no indication of just how well his Western historical fictional ‘Rawlins’ trilogy is written and received.

DeStefanis introduces the young Tennessean Virgil Rawlins against the backdrop of the Civil War and the American West in “Rawlins, No Longer Young.” Through that introduction, we learn of Rawlins’ own code of honor, of meeting Sarah McCaskey and most importantly, of his unique ability to question his own touchstones. It is in this novel that Rawlins learns that defining his future begins with the decision between being an outlaw or a lawman, with shades of gray and blue both tinting the choice.

In “Rawlins, Into Montana: Even Paradise has its price,” the former Confederate soldier and Sarah agree to lead a wagon train of 20 families along the Oregon Trail and into the Montana Territory. While many of the adventurers are on a quest for gold, Rawlins and his wife are setting out for Paradise Valley, aptly named for its natural beauty but antithesis to the dangers that threaten their peace, family and land.

The segue from that novel fits perfectly into “Rawlins, Last Ride to Montana.” Hoping for a reconciliation with Sarah’s family in the East, the Rawlins set out from Paradise Valley with their children. By this time, Virgil’s fighting skills, gained on the battlefield and during his time as a Pacific Railroad policeman, have become legendary. But during the few times when legend is not enough to deter attackers, we learn of Sarah’s strength: “Rawlins felt Sarah’s presence when she stepped up close behind him in the doorway and pressed a revolver into the hand behind his back. That was his Sarah. She was that kind of woman. She saw things through the same prism as he did — one of frontier survival.”

Developing dual storylines in this final novel of the three — Virgil and Sarah separate for much of the story, he driving cattle and she attempting familial fence-mending — DeStefanis presents enough realistic adventures and scene building to ensure this novel has room on your bookshelf next to Louis L’Amour. And although “Last Ride to Montana” is a continuation novel with enough exposition to leave you satisfied, if you’ve got the space, add the first two books as well.

‘All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone’ by John J. Jacobson, Blackstone Publishing, $27.99

Continuing along the Old West trail for a moment, new this month is John J. Jacobson’s “All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone,” a late-1880s story with a 2021 motif.

Jacobson’s novel is the most quixotic cowboy story you’re likely to ever read. And just like that storied tale, this one is funny, adventurous and most of all, timely.

“All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone” is a man-out-of-time story. Texan Lincoln Smith is living at the turn of the 20th century, a time when the Old West is rapidly fading, much to the chagrin of the young man who fashions himself as the last true cowboy — even channeling a Johnny Cash who won’t be born for nearly 40 years as the story opens: “His mother wouldn’t let him take his .22 caliber rifle out by himself until he turned twelve, three long months from now.”

Old beyond his years, Lincoln longs to live a chivalric code from a time when men such as his Texas Ranger father righted wrongs with nobility. And true to those roots, when as a young man his heart is broken and he is expelled from Dartmouth for nearly blowing up the school — and after serving for a time in the only stint a “true” cowboy at that time could achieve: traveling in a second-tier Wild West show (“Bronco Buck Burke’s Wild West and Tranquility Show wasn’t a first-line outfit like Buffalo Bill’s,” the narrator explains) — he decides there is no recourse but to do what all romantically challenged men must do: join the foreign legion.

Weaned on dime novels, Lincoln’s grasp of what the foreign legion will be like rivals Cervantes’ creation, and from there the story becomes pure fun. Meeting up with a couple of American treasure seekers also planning to enlist, he travels toward exotic lands, meeting, fighting and mentoring with his anachronistic tendencies in tow. Armed with his father’s keepsake Winchester, he encounters Crocodile cults, desert hermits and enough adventure and derring-do for a lifetime — both his and ours.

Even given the story’s early 20th century setting, Jacobson has written a novel for now. Lincoln Smith is the hero today for all of those who, if not long for, certainly wax nostalgic about a time before the iPhone, the Internet and social media were ubiquitous.

‘The Committed,’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Grove Press, $27

There’s plenty of existential action — two words that aren’t often juxtaposed in books of any type — in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new novel, “The Committed.” But here we have it.

From page 1, as the man of two faces begins to describe a horrific journey fleeing to France, and page 2 with a perennial conundrum and Vonnegut-esque reply — “And it stuck us all then, the answer to humanity’s eternal question of Why? ... It was, and is, simply, why not?” — we get the early sense we’re in for cerebral ride.

And we’re right.

“The Committed” is a sequel to Nguyen’s 2016 action-filled existential Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer.” Set in the 1980s, the novels share a narrator — a half-Vietnamese, half-French Communist spy who calls himself “a man of two faces and two minds” — and a continuing story.

After the man with two minds went undercover in “The Sympathizer” as a refugee in America, he was captured and committed for re-education. Now, he arrives in Paris with his blood brother, Bon. Hooking up with the French Vietnamese woman who is declared as his “aunt,” the men set up a business dealing drugs to French intellectuals — allowing Nguyen room to bring in the ideas of revolutionaries such as Fanon, Marx and Sartre.

From there, the novel takes off, sometimes funny, sometimes brilliant and, admittedly, sometimes overwritten in scenes that work hard, as when the man with two minds becomes involved in gangster activity, uttering lines that can fall a bit flat: “You can’t torture me. … I’ve lived through a re-education camp.” Well, actually, anyone could be tortured, and the man of two faces lives on to produce a complicated story in which the reading pleasure is in unwinding the twists.

Still, this is Nguyen and themes of addiction, authoritarianism, colonialism and the like are woven masterfully into a story brimming with suspense, challenging the Sympathizer with tasks as divergent as reconciling his own inner turmoils, combatting a state-sanctioned colonial mindset and reuniting his two best friends whose world views are at polar opposites.

To date, four authors have twice won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction — Colson Whitehead joined Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner and John Updike in that exclusive club in 2020 — but after reading “The Committed,” it’s clear that Nguyen could be a contender for a fifth addition. It would also be the first to win a Pulitzer for a novel and its sequel and, of course, the symmetry of Nguyen winning in 2016 and Whitehead in 2017, and Whitehead in 2020 and Nguyen in 2021 would be just about as existential as it gets.

‘Win’ by Harlan Coben, Grand Central Publishing, $29

A Coben standalone novel about Win — super rich, super handsome Windsor Horne Lockwood III, fixer friend to sports agent Myron Bolitar — has long been a fan fancy, and here it is, with the author’s 33rd novel starring the sidekick in a title story all his own.

His own it is. Win’s narrative penchant is speaking directly to the reader — a style you’ll either love or hate. Devotees of first-person stories will devour the book, and others … well, they’ll no doubt ride alone for one of Coben’s most tautly plotted thrillers to date.

Win is the uber-competent friend everyone wishes they had. He’s able to make problems disappear with the wave of his wallet or a flash of his phone, and if a date to a beach house via helicopter is on your bucket list, he’s the guy that’ll loan you all three.

But here, Coben’s “Win” is more complicated in several ways than in the author’s typical fare. For one, Win has his own moral compass, and is fit enough to force the needle to point toward his own True North. What makes him either a smartass or a badass, depending on your own view, is that he doesn’t really care what you think, and tells you just that. So, it’s not that those who’ll find him intolerable aren’t in on the gag, they just don’t like the brand of humor.

But in this novel, Win’s voice is perfect for a story that involves a rediscovered Vermeer that had been stolen from the Lockwood estate, an ancient suitcase of the narrator’s that’s discovered in the apartment of a dead subversive from the 1960s and a cousin who was one of 10 young women abducted and taken to the “hut of horrors” for just about every unimaginable horror a woman could be forced to endure.

Through money, no small amount of intelligence and a lot of muscle, Win sets out to unravel these riddles, driven by the ever-present need to keep the family name unsullied and his own sense of social justice just as clear.

Clear also is Win’s voice to the last page, when the facade breaks just a crack as we witness the one — the only — thing he cares for beyond himself: his “biological daughter.” Yet true to form, he closes the crack just as quickly, sending the reader off with vintage Win narrating the black and white of his worldview: “When my daughter turns and looks at me, all those grays suddenly vanish in the bright of her smile. For perhaps the first time in my life, I only see the white. Am I being hackneyed? Perhaps. But since when have I cared what you thought?” Badass, indeed.

Young adult fiction

‘Houdini and Me’ by Dan Gutman, Holiday House, $16.99

Dan Gutman has authored more than 150 books, with about a dozen of those either nonfiction or written for adults. The rest he writes for children, tweens and teens, and based on the success of his “My Weird School” series, he gets the way kids think. But better, he get the ways kids learn.

There’s a lot to learn in his odd and inviting “Houdini and Me,” and the author pays considerable attention to details in his honest storytelling. As Gutman writes in an afterword, “everything in this book is true, except for the stuff I made up.”

Kids, and adults enlightened enough to pick up a YA title, will learn in this book a lot about the famed magician Harry Houdini (including his real name and how he performed some of his most iconic tricks), a lot about New York City during both the early 20th century and today (including incredibly accurate physical details — Gutman lives eight blocks from the house on 113th Street where Houdini lived; an inspiration for the story) and a lot about loyalty, friendship, bullying and facing your fears (the foundation of YA and really well-written adult novels).

You’ll also learn about some things that aren’t exactly or fully in the undeniably true camp, spirituality chief among them.

Gutman’s story is tied to a vintage cell phone and Houdini’s ability to communicate from the dead on it with 11-year-old Harry Mancini. The author does make clear in “Facts & Fictions” at the end of the book that his story has limits — “you cannot communicate with dead people by text message. Don’t bother trying” — but the prospect is intriguing. If Houdini could communicate from the afterworld, what would he want?

The answer to that is nothing less than to perform his best escape act ever — coming back from the dead by exchanging places with a young boy from the future. Harry Mancini is that boy, and although the storyline reads implausibly on the surface, the deal is that both would get something from a temporary exchange — young Harry a chance to experience the life of a worldwide celebrity and Houdini the chance to make good on his famous boast that could he cheat death, he would somehow find a way. The moral dilemmas presented make for engaging and thought-provoking reading.

‘Deadman’s Castle’ by Iain Lawrence, Margaret Ferguson Books, $17.99

Combine the name Igor and a title with the word castle and you’re likely to come up with something a la “Frankenstein.” But Iain Lawrence’s “Deadman’s Castle” is much creepier than that.

Six years before the story opens, Igor Watson’s father “saw someone do a terrible thing.” Since then, the family has been on the run, changing towns and homes through a witness protection program run by the Protectors whenever the Lizard Man — the boogeyman, so named because of a tattoo, who did the terrible thing — catches up with them. It could be days or years until the family has to move and the uncertainty is now wearing on 12-year-old “Igor,” his latest alias and one of so many that he can’t remember them all.

Approaching his teen years, Igor finally talks his father and mother into letting him attend school, something he hasn’t done since kindergarten. With his cover story intact, Igor begins to experience all that a public education has to offer — making friends, bullying, classes and homework included — but soon realizes that his parents’ web of rules (curtains closed, be home before dark, don’t travel further than a certain street and continually lie about his background) aren’t going to work if he wants to make friends on any real level. Worse, their new town is the only one of the dozens that he’s lived in that somehow feels like home, with an unaccustomed unfamiliarity about it, and he doesn’t want to have to move again.

The closer Igor gets to making serious friendships, the more his story starts to slip. And, the longer they stay in the town, the more he begins to doubt his father’s sanity. After all, only his father has ever seen the Lizard Man.

Lawrence develops this story with real suspense, real problems and the very real concerns of any pre-teen — especially one whose life is built on a series of lies that if unleashed could threaten his family’s safety. The “creepy” factor — Is there really a Lizard Man, and, if not, why would his father, a former college professor, make up not only that, but the story about the Protectors and force his family to move and start anew time and again with his mother complicit in the scam? — is well developed, and it is only through the power of friendship and honesty that the action is resolved.

“Deadman’s Castle” is not your typical YA fare — probably because Iain Lawrence is not a typical YA author, having himself lived in 11 different homes and attended nine different schools before high school — and middle readers will love it. Every young teen at some time questions parental authority and rules, and in “Deadman’s Castle,” Lawrence has tapped into an instinct for rebellion that will universally appeal.

‘Firekeeper’s Daughter’ by Angeline Boulley, Henry Holt and Co., $18.99

Angeline Boulley’s debut novel “Firekeeper’s Daughter” is one the most beautiful books, in substance and production, that you’ll find among YA readers — and it’s also one of the most important.

The Anishinaabe author began writing the novel a decade ago with the idea of creating an “indigenous Nancy Drew” character — crafting a story with people and settings that reflected her cultural upbringing. And, because storytelling is central to the Anishinaabe way, a novel springing from “an Ojibwa girl with a Native dad and non-Native mom” makes sense.

In “Firekeeper’s Daughter,” Boulley accomplishes this and more.

The story centers on 18-year-old Daunis Fountaine, a teenager who loves her life but wants more — she longs to be an official part of the Sault tribe. Originally planning on leaving home for college, Daunis changes her mind after her uncle dies from an overdose and her grandmother has a stroke.

She then decides to enroll at a school near her Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., home. Battling complex familial challenges — her Anishinaable father is deceased — she soon becomes involved in challenges outside of the family. When her best friend is murdered by a boyfriend who is addicted to meth, she begins to explore the pervasive drug overdoses infiltrating the Ojibwa reservation and uses her education in chemistry and native plants to go undercover for the FBI to help source the seller. As the story develops, Daunis becomes increasingly concerned that her investigation will expose more than a drug dealer — opening truths to old scars that could threaten to sunder the community she loves.

Tightly plotted with taut suspense and meaningful characters, there is little wonder that “Firekeeper’s Daughter” has been adapted by Netflix for TV and plucked for many YA book clubs. Exploring what it means to be an Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman), making stands on issues of citizenship, language and drug use within Native communities are important topics that are addressed with skill and sensitivity.

Some advice: Read the book before you see the story on television. Boulley’s storyline will be well-adapted to the small screen, but the crisp characters and the nuances and subtleness of her language and writing could only be fully appreciated in novel form.

Nonfiction

‘Ms. Adventure: My wild explorations in science, lava, and life’ by Jess Phoenix, Timber Press, $24.95

The best nonfiction reads like fiction, and that’s certainly true of Jess Phoenix’s “Ms. Adventure: My wild explorations in science, lava, and life.” And when you lead a life as exciting as that of an extreme explorer, scientist, volcanologist and cofounder of the environmental scientific research organization Blueprint Earth, it’s certain that any book of those adventures would read like a thriller.

Yet here it’s all true, and Phoenix’s message that “exploration and science are our birthrights as humans” is soundly and thrillingly shared.

Like authors of the best fiction, Phoenix is a skilled writer and gifted storyteller with a startlingly ability to weave telling details into her narrative. It’s no wonder that she is so often tapped to speak at national forums — her life is her story, and the passion she feels for her profession and the climes she studies are captured with infectious enthusiasm on each page.

Geologists and explorers alike will thrill in some of the career highlights Phoenix shares — teasing ancient secrets from rock specimens, harrowing high-altitude treks into the Andes’ Nevada Salkantay, enduring a bout of appendicitis on Hawaii’s Mt. Kilauea and railing against a media establishment that sometimes works to sensationalize her sex above her profession (as when she is asked by a TV crew to fake a fall so that she could be “rescued” by a male team member) among those.

Other stories detail more inner journeys, such as her acceptance into the Explorers Club — the international professional society that works to advance field research and “reserve the instinct to explore” — but are no less stimulating. “Ms. Adventure” transcends stereotypes in important ways, and is sure to excite a new generation of adventurers.

I don’t read a lot of westerns but the description of All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone really hooked me, so I asked to review it, and wow! What a fantastic adventure this book is!

Protagonist Lincoln Smith is introduced to us as a young man with a vivid imagination, and a dislike of trains. In fact the first time we meet him, he’s “attacking” one with his pint-sized bow and arrows. Very quickly, we see that while be may balk (as many children and teens do) at being in formal school sessions – run by his mother – he’s inquisitive, intelligent, and interested in the world around him, albeit a version of the world that is already disappearing when the novel opens in 1888.

What follows are a series of adventures that pit Lincoln against the ever changing American – and world – culture and technology, as well as his own dreams and desires. From the open spaces of his native Texas to the exotic locales seen after he really does join the Foreign Legion, Lincoln’s real antagonist is himself, and that story is fascinating.

What I loved about this novel was the language. I could hear the accents in Lincoln’s speech and his mother’s corrections of his phrasing. “Dern” may not technically be cussing, as he points out in an early scene, but his mother doesn’t want him using it anyway. Those organic conversations are universal – what parent hasn’t had such a chat with their child? – and for me they really “sold” this story, grounding it in emotional truth.

Author Jacobson has a knack for vivid description, as well, and I never had a problem visualizing any setting.

At times funny, poignant, hopeful, and somewhat resigned, All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone makes you wistful for a period in American history long since past, but one that still lingers in the shadows of our imaginations, where we can still slap on a Stetson hat, climb onto an (imaginary for most of us) horse, and keep the modern world from encroaching too far, too quickly.

Goes well with: a bottle of sarsaparilla and leftover brisket in a sandwich.

"The direction of the arrow cannot be changed. It may be slowed, but not changed."

All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone by John J. Jacobson is an exuberant good time set at the tail end of the Old West era. Living in Texas during the turn of the twentieth century, young Lincoln Smith longs for those long-gone glory days of the Texas Rangers and the Old West uncluttered by oil wells and modern machinery. The spread of the railroad across the United States and other inventions are nothing but travesties and eyesores to Lincoln. Books about the Old West and the French Foreign Legion sustain him throughout his childhood, providing him with the dream of one day joining the Legion and traveling to lands left unmarred by modern ways and contraptions.

In the first six chapters, Lincoln's life takes a dramatic turn just months before his twelfth birthday. The story jumps ahead ten years, and Lincoln reluctantly shuffles off to college, but more exciting capers are on the horizon when he finally seizes the opportunity to seek out the Legionnaires and travel to exotic destinations.

Lincoln is a completely likable main character, full of spunk and ingenuity and endowed with proper grammar (his mother is a school teacher, after all), his father’s rifle (Lincoln’s most prized possession), and an unquenchable zest for adventure. When Lincoln meets two older guys, Jake and Johnny, who are also intent on joining the Legion, the story takes a new and often hilarious turn. The goal for these two gents is to get posted in Sidi Bel Abbès in Algeria, North Africa, so they can secretly look for King Sol’s lost treasure in legendary Mur. Lincoln agrees to help them search but insists his loyalty will remain with the Legion if they join up. Once again, however, the plot twists and turns in a new direction.

Jacobson has a flair for adding a hefty dose humor into some dastardly action filled with murder, peril, and greed. This mixture works well in this story, making it fast paced and fun to read. The reader never becomes a victim of boredom with All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone because riotous and dangerous surprises await Lincoln and his friends around every corner.

Lincoln’s adventures are somewhat reminiscent of Sir H. Rider Haggard’s 1885 bestseller King Solomon’s Mines, positioning All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone at the edges of that Lost World literary subgenre of the popular Victorian adventure/romance. While Lincoln quickly adapts his rugged old-fashioned Texas ways where ever he goes, he always remains a swashbuckling adventurer and a gentleman with an unshakable code of honor.

All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone is a must read for anyone needing a break from life’s toils and tribulations and looking for a spirited romp that moves from Texas all the way to Algeria, with Lincoln Smith never failing to charm and entertain throughout each chapter.

"I've never been accused of being normal."

I received a free copy of this book from Lone Star Book Blog Tours in exchange for my honest review.

No, I’ve just wanted to go to a place where everything is strange and new and it’s like what you felt seeing everything for the first time.”

The adventures of a Texas cowboy who hates the sounds of mechanical anything is not the story I was expecting when I started All The Cowboys Ain’t Gone by author John J. Jacobson. I was expecting the story to stay tied to south Texas and northern Mexico. What the author delivered was the story of a well-educated boy who turned into a young man taking off on a wild adventure to join the French Legion.

The cowboy in question is Lincoln Smith and his adventures drive this book in brisk chunks of time. From south Texas to Florida to Africa. What I love about this story how the author took me on an adventure that I didn’t want to put down. It was very reminiscent of Indiana Jones and epic Italian spaghetti Western movies all mingling together.

There is a treasure to be found, amongst the crocodiles, a stolen rifle, a dead horse, a few kidnappings are all a part of a boisterous tour de force by Jacobson. The best part was that it is highly realistic and energetically fun. Quite well-written the only flaw I saw with this story neared the end and felt like it quite rushed to a small degree.

If you are wanting a perfect escapism book that brings to life adventures from the wilds of Texas to the sands of Africa, then check out Jacobson’s book All The Cowboys Ain’t Gone.

This is an epic adventure story that some have compared to Indiana Jones, and the comparison is perfect. Lincoln is a bigger-than-life hero, and while he is not on the search for an ancient artifact, he’s searching for his place in the world. Like those sagas featuring the indomitable Indiana Jones, this one asks the reader to suspend their disbelief quite a bit and just go along for the ride.

If you can do that, you’ll enjoy this book a lot and travel the world with Lincoln and all the people he meets during his escapades.

We meet Lincoln as a boy when he’s shooting arrows at a locomotive because he hates those machines that are sucking the earth dry, and, for the first few chapters, I thought this was going to be a typical Western story. It is not. It has elements of what we like about a Western – horses and cattle and ranches and good guys and bad guys and a quest for retribution – but then it takes an abrupt turn some years later when Lincoln loses his job with the Wild West Show and decides to follow his inclination to join the French Foreign Legion. That’s when the real adventure starts.

Lincoln is a good guy, a character who always wears a white hat. There’s nothing dark about him at all, and at times I wondered if his almost childlike innocence would be his undoing. Luckily, it was not. It was fascinating to also know him as an educated and well-read gentleman, and I absolutely loved his exchange of Shakespeare quotes with the old man in the cave. Of all the people that Lincoln meets in his adventures around the world, I enjoyed that Muslim holy man, called a marabout, the most, and the description of him with his long white beard and brown robes made me realize I may have my own marabout hanging out on my deck in the form of a gnome.

The old wise man in the book, not the one on my deck, has much to teach Lincoln, including this line from Shakespeare, “Futility, futility, oh don’t you see it as futile! The direction of the arrow cannot be changed. It may be slowed, but not changed.” That quotation seems to describe the course that Lincoln had set for himself as he tries to find and follow the direction of his life.

If you’re ready to saddle up for a wild ride, I highly recommend this fast-paced story with adventures of epic proportions.