The Son, Meyer - B+

                                         This is a wonderful novel, one of the NY Times' 100 Notable Books of the Year.   It is a Texas-sized book and story about the fictional McCullogh clan.  There is one character so fabulously portrayed, such a grizzled fella of the old west, that I thought of Larry McMurtry and put on the soundtrack to 'Lonesome Dove'.  That man is Eli McCullogh, and the opening chapter is presented as a WPA oral project from the year 1936.  The hundred-year-old Eli is telling his story, and what a tale it is.  He was captured as a ten-year- old by the Comanches and was with them for four years.  As he was an outdoor-loving hunter and tracker, he overcame the  pain of losing his family and eventually fit right in as an Indian. He accompanied them on raids, and successfully tracked down a white man and scalped him. He was never freer or happier than when a young brave.  The Indians, though, were under relentless demographic pressure and when they succumbed to smallpox, he returned to the white man's world.  And although it took him decades to be comfortable in that world, he nonetheless prospered. He was a brevet Col. in the Texas Rangers during the Civil War, ran cattle, and ultimately accumulated hundreds of thousands of acres of land. He success stemmed from being ruthless and tough. His approach to preventing rustling on his lands was simple. If someone unauthorized rode onto McCullogh land, he was a dead man. Later, he leased some of his land to the oil companies and just got richer and richer. His Spanish neighbors had held their land for decades before any American's had appeared in the valley. When some of his cattle disappeared, he was quite comfortable blaming the Garcias and participating in the slaughter of the 'Mexicans' and the confiscation of their land.  That act, which took place during the Mexican-American border wars just before WW1, would haunt his grandson and great-granddaughter, the other two major characters in the novel. Additionally, just being a descendant of the Col. was a pretty heavy burden to bear.  This is a wonderful tale of old Texas, an exploration of the never-ending role of race in our society, and a helluva read.