"The novels of James Carlos Blake are "reminiscent of Larry McMurtry's Western novels--only harsher and bloodier. Like "Lonesome Dove"'s creator, Blake favors straight-talking, unschooled narrators who speak in a vivid, salty vernacular, and his fiction is so readable--so folksy, action-packed, and earthy--it's easy to miss the fact that it is also, frequently, brilliant."--"Entertainment Weekly"
James Carlos Blake is a master at weaving historical fact into fiction. Two generations of Wolfe men--begat by an English pirate in New Hampshire in 1828--track their violent but manifest destiny through the Diaz regime in Mexico in the early 1900s and back to Gulf Coast Texas. The novel centers on two sets of identical "hero twins," each with a violent history that mirrors the author's belief in the primacy of violence in the evolution of civilization. Their lives are intertwined with important events through the history of the United States, beginning in the 1820s. Crucial are the histories of the infamous Saint Patrick's Battalion (revered in Mexico as "los San Patricios") who deserted the US Army during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and the rise and fall of the Porfirio Diaz regime (1876-1910), which marked the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.
James Carlos Blake was born in Tampico, Mexico, and grew up in Brownsville, Texas, and Florida. He is the author of nine novels and a collection of short stories. His novel "In Rogue Blood "won the "Los Angeles Times "Book Prize for Fiction in 1997. He lives in Tucson, AZ."The Country of Bad Wolves" is a semi-autobiographical novel. Less
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