Unsurprisingly , there ’ s no consensus on what precipitated the fall of the west . Some say it was a result of too much cultural assimilation , others say it was the result of too little . Arguments abound of financial crisis , corruption , conquest , decadence , or the emergence of fiefs , rump states and Christianity . The most convincing explanation is that the west had been in slow decline for some time , and that it was not any one thing that brought about its ruin but a combination of them all . To borrow a quote from Jacob Riis , it ’ s never the final hammer blow that breaks a rock ; it ’ s all the blows that came before it .

This crappy lesson in historiography isn ’ t merely rhetorical ; how we decide to remember the past is central to Philipp Meyer ’ s “ The Son ,” which , tellingly , begins and ends with allusions to Edward Gibbon ’ s “ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire .” In some ways , Meyer ’ s epic saga of a wealthy Texas family is no less ambitious a literary undertaking . ( He ’ s said to have read more than 300 books on Texas in preparation of the task .) It stretches from the plains of South Texas to the Davis Mountains , mirroring the breadth and depth of the geography ranged by the Comanche “ The Son ” spends so much time dissecting . It indulges in thematic elements common to the genre – rugged individualism , the human toll of westward expansion , the shared inheritance of our forebears – even as it subverts them to its own ends . It interrogates how moral imperatives deviate from accepted mores of different times and cultures . And it delves headfirst into more contemporary issues like traditional gender roles , homosexuality , the atomizing gravity of wealth , and the search for identity in an indifferent world . But more than anything , “ The Son ” plays with time and the persistence of memory to weave together a story that at once dispels the mythos surrounding the taming of the American frontier and reminds us that the tides of history are never so tidy .

It does so through three alternating timelines , each one narrated by a separate member of the McCullough dynasty . One revolves around Eli McCullough , the family patriarch through whose wake subsequent generations pass . As a young boy , his family was murdered by Comanches , and although he and his older , gentler brother were taken captive , only Eli survived the trek through the Llano Estacado to their abductors ’ settlement . There , he embraced his new home and became a respected member of the tribe . But as the Comanche were decimated by conquest and disease , Eli was again forced to walk between worlds as he tried – and failed – to acculturate to the white community . He would scout for the Texas Rangers and then for the Confederacy in the Civil War , during which he absconded with Union gold to buy the properties that would form the basis of his fortune . His bloody , listless upbringing among both Comanche and whites would instill in him a concept of power that he held as both eternal and arbitrary , its use regrettable and necessary . Eli ’ s story is as much a meditation on violence as it is a valediction to a bygone world .

Whether that world truly is a thing of the past – and whether that even matters – is at the heart of another timeline , this one narrated by Eli ’ s son Peter . Presented as a series of journal entries around the time of the Bandit Wars , Peter ’ s tale covers an episode in which Eli foments anti-Mexican sentiment to murder a neighboring clan , whose homestead had been in South Texas since before America was America , so that he could take the land for his own . Undergirding every journal entry is the hidden cost of moral courage and cowardice . Peter wants no part in the massacre , but he does little to stop it , and the fact he ’ s the only one to object to it only estranges him from his family further . A couple years later , the only survivor , Maria , shows up to the McCullough estate . She and Peter fall in love , after which the family bribes her to leave him and return to Mexico . Peter exhausts his claim to the family fortune to find her . They marry and have two children , and he spends his remaining years in Mexico .

Their chickens come home to roost in the third and final timeline , narrated by Eli ’ s great-granddaughter ( and Peter ’ s granddaughter ) Jeanne Anne . We find J . A . at the end of her life , old and confused , reflecting on her accomplishments and piecing together how she came to be sprawled out on the floor of her home , head bleeding , the smell of gas in the air . She was an awkward child , happier attending to the family ranch than attending school , and through the tutelage of her great-uncle Phineas she comes to understand that cattle husbandry is a dying industry , and that her father is too dumb to see it . When he dies , she inherits the estate , which she almost single-handedly shepherds to even greater heights though savvy oil ventures , real estate plays and diversified investments . J . A . is Meyer ’ s vehicle for showcasing a different kind of Wild West : the financial grab bag of post-World War II America , where anything went so long as you had the capital to make it go .

The irony lost on the narrators is that for all their differences they have a lot in common – just not in the way they think . They are all people out of place , strangers to themselves and to the world the live in . Eli a lone wolf , Peter a poet , J . A . a woman in a man ’ s world . They understand that their iconoclasm is what makes them special , and that to some degree they are relics of a time that no longer exists . Where “ The Son ” excels is in showing that the era they think they belong to never existed – or existed but never ended . Imperial innuendo drips from the book ’ s pages , but like Rome , the McCullough empire was neither built nor destroyed in a day . It was hard fought for over the years , and even if it endures for centuries in spite of the family ’ s foibles , it will inevitably come to an end . The land was always the land . The McCulloughs were just its newest stewards . �

Cenizo Spring 2024 13