The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - by Ron Hansen

Back in 1882, long before television and popular music would make celebrities of bad-boy rappers, newspapers and pulp fiction made celebrities of desperado bank and train robbers, most notable among them being Jesse James. He was a former Confederate soldier, and his popularity was somewhat a reaction to the sense of disenfranchisement of Southerners following the War. He was widely reported as robbing from the rich (Yankees) to give to the poor (Southern whites), although in reality he mostly kept the money for himself. The fact that Jesse had killed 19 men was largely ignored. He was a larger-than-life folk hero.

Enter Robert Ford, a 19-year-old boy who was Jesse's obsessed fan, having collected clippings and memorized facts about his hero from a young age. Desperate to be "somebody," to be himself idolized and remembered, he gained entry into Jesse's outlaw gang, and while a guest in his home, shot Jesse in the back while he was standing on a chair dusting a picture.

This is their story.

Author Ron Hansen does a bang-up job of bringing to life a fictionalized history. The climax of the plot is, of course, known to the reader in advance, so the narrative focuses not on what happened but on why it happened and on psychological portraits of the two involved. This is actually more a picture of the assassin than of the assassinated. Robert Ford had assumed he would be celebrated for his deed. Hansen reports him as saying, "I thought...that I'd be the greatest man in America if I shot him. I thought they would congratulate me and I'd get my name in books." Instead, Ford often heard himself being maligned in saloons by a popular song which called him "a dirty little coward," and people crossed to the other side of the street to avoid him.

Also notable in this novel is Hansen's writing style, which is very attractive and filled with arresting phrases and descriptions. Indeed, occasionally he is almost too original and striking, taking away from the narrative by drawing attention to the clever writing.

This novel provides a very enjoyable reading experience. I would also recommend Hansen's Desperadoes, another fictionalized history, and Mariette in Ecstasy, about religious obsession.