May 31, 2022
There is nothing sentimental about turn-of-the-century Arizona Territory. The sun beats down relentlessly, the ground is unforgiving, eking out a living is impossible; eventually, your heart turns calloused, too. In Hardland, Sweeney (Answer Creek, 2020) makes Arizona a character. Set in fictional Jericho, the novel topples the walls dramatically around her flawed protagonist, Ruby Fortune. Born to a prostitute who dies in childbirth, Ruby is raised as a sharpshooter in a traveling circus and married to an abusive swindler as a young teen. Eventually, Ruby and her husband settle in Jericho, close to Ruby's adoptive mother and a mine to which Ruby's husband holds a dubious, partial claim. When Ruby can take the brutal abuse no longer--the book contains frank depictions of domestic violence and sexual assault--a split-second decision alters her life forever and forces her to draw on long-forgotten inner strength. Though her actions alienate two of her children, they draw her two others closer. Ruby finds friends, collects lovers, and outsmarts malevolent men time and again. Her life, after that fateful day, is hard--but in the harshness of it all, she finds forgiveness.
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A single mother of four in the Arizona Territory strives for independence in Sweeney's Western. It's 1899, and it's no secret that Ruby Fortune shot her husband. After enduring his abuse for years, the "Girl Wonder" sharpshooter of the Wild West circus circuit struck back. In this novel by Sweeney, the author of Answer Creek (2020), freshly widowed Ruby wastes no time in ensuring that she's provided for in the wake of her husband's death, securing an inheritance by questionable means. With the help of friends in high and low places, she becomes the proprietor, cook, maid, and manager of the brand-new Jericho Inn, and begins a new life. Although her day-to-day life is quickly consumed by her new responsibilities, unsavory characters from Jericho and beyond darken Ruby's doorstep, bringing with them the lawlessness, roguery, and tension readers expect from a Western. Ruby has little patience for the wheedling threats of locals who've had it in for her ever since she shot her spouse, and much less for those outside the community who pose dangers to herself and her family. She deals with each situation as it comes and does her best to mask the emotional toll it takes on her. Bursts of sudden, graphic violence, including in-depth descriptions of rape and domestic violence, seem to have few repercussions on the overall plot, which moves sluggishly through the Arizona heat. Still, despite the rough environment and frequent dangers, this novel is best understood as a slice-of-life story--a long, hard look at the experience of a woman making it on her own at a particular moment and place in time in American history. Fans of historical fiction and those with an interest in details of life in the Western territories will find it particularly engaging. Still, Sweeney spends so much time building atmosphere that she doesn't give adequate attention to each theme, character, and subplot she introduces. A vividly rendered story of survival in the Arizona Territory, hampered by a tendency to ramble.
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