New Release—A Good Day To Die by James Ciccone

 

You don’t want to make me mad. I’ve got a lot of hate in me, and I am not afraid of one blessed thing in this life. I’m Crawford Goldsby—better known as Cherokee Bill—and if you think you’re the one to bring me to justice you’re wrong…dead wrong.

They call me a half-breed, but I killed my first man by the time I was twelve, and I never stopped. Why? Because I like killing—and I’m damn good at it. Indian Territory wouldn’t be the same without me.

But this outlaw likes living, too, and when I rob that train carrying millions for a big payoff here in Indian Territory, I’ve got a plan to cut loose and run to South America—along with my fancy woman, Maggie.

Don’t get in my way. Indian Territory is mine. Oklahoma Territory is mine. If you cross me, your life is mine, too. I’m barely eighteen, and I can deliver a kill shot without even looking your way—yes, I’m that good.

Judge Parker can’t wait to get his hands on me over in Fort Smith. If he does, death by hanging will be end of me. Will Parker get his wish?  We’ll see…I’ve gotten confident in my own abilities to escape. If he gets his way at last, he won’t see Cherokee Bill running scared.

I’ll look the bastard in the eye and say, “It’s A GOOD DAY TO DIE…”

EXCERPT

Our gang, the Cook gang, was a ragtag assortment of homicidal maniacs, idiots, desperados, sexual perverts, gamblers, debtors, horse thieves, and perennial losers. And we all liked killing.

By the age of twelve, I had already managed to quit school, drink liquor, hang out with outlaws, shoot and kill a man, and gain an acquittal on a murder charge in open court. Admittedly, that was quite an impressive start in life.

In 1894, stories about me started hitting newspapers from as far away as New York and as close as the Fort Smith Elevator across the border in Arkansas. Of course, the reporters didn’t get the stories straight or put my real name out there, Crawford Goldsby. Instead, they used Cherokee Bill, and got folks all riled up by putting out that I was an outlaw with no fear, a robber on a reign of terror, a desperado at the same level of notoriety as Wild Bill Hitchcock, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Johnny Ringo, the Calico Cowboy, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. However, none of that was exactly true. It was far worse. The truth was I was a kid of only eighteen, and my “reign of terror with the law,” as they put it, was just getting started.

     

On Confederates, Conquistadors, Crusaders, Carolingians, and Centurions

Christopher Columbus

As an amateur historian, I sometimes find it disingenuous to ascribe labels of "good" and "evil" to the motivations of people in the past, especially to demonize the heroes of those eras in order to promote political agendas of the present.  

For example, in my novel Harper's Donelson, Lieutenant Jamie Harper fights to restore the Union and is, at best, neutral towards the issue of slavery and a member of Bedford Forrest's staff quotes from the Bible as the justification for slavery.  In the same vein, Katie Malloy is a teen-aged prostitute who, we learn, would rather commit suicide than be forced to lay with a mulatto.  Are these views to be held against them by a modern reader?  I think not. 

Slavery has been part of the human condition since before civilization began and is still with us. The common morality in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century, the era of Manifest Destiny, justified slavery under the belief that all non-whites were inferior species and not alternate races of the same species. Some religious denominations actually preached this belief from the pulpit. How can we expect the common man of the era to believe differently?

Yes, it is true that there were abolitionists who violently opposed  these views, but they were a minority.  Neither Jamie Harper or Katie Malloy pay attention to the politics of the abolitionists.  They are focused on the travails of their own lives.

So, are Jamie and Katie good or evil?  I believe they are an accurate representation of the values of that age.  They are people of their time.  I won't condemn them for not caring about the evils of slavery based on our twenty-first century values .  They don't live in my century.

The people of the past lived under different belief systems than we do in the present. I find it difficult to believe than most modern persons would behave any differently than they, had they lived among popular ideologies of the past.

 

Sean Gabhann

 

What are your thoughts?

 

Harper's Donelson is available from Amazon, Barnes and Nobel e-store, Smashwords, and Kobo.

 

Sean Kevin Gabhann is a Vietnam-era combat veteran of the US Navy.  He first became interested in American Civil War history during the centennial celebration and he owns an extensive library of primary and secondary material related to Civil War.  He especially wants to write about campaigns in the West because of a fascination with the careers of U.S Grant and W.T. Sherman.  Gabhann lives in San Diego, California with his wife, four sons, two daughters-in-law, three grandsons, three dogs and a cat named Pepper who sometimes thinks she’s a dog.