Deer Run Trail
Series: The Trail, Book 1
Written and Narrated By: David R. Lewis
Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
Audiobook Accomplice’s FIRST Western, and it’s a Yesssssss!!!
I do a lot of different genres, but I’m the first to admit that stuff like Thrillers make my toes curl from anxiety, and Mysteries are only now being discovered.
But when we decided to do an entire Newsletter devoted to divulged Accomplice favorites? A Western came up… hiiiiiighly recommended… a Western… yes, me… the person whose sole exposure to the ilk was the genre-bending The Cowboy and the Cossack (I’ll get around to reviewing that someday).
Plus it’s narrated by the author, and that’s aaaalways an iffy thing.
Oh, how tickled to death I was. First, it has jangly interstitial music which adds to the feel of being out on the prairie instead of being jarring (As most interstitial music is… I’m looking at YOU: Of Mice and Men!!!). Second is author David R. Lewis is a truly wonderful narrator. As you get into the story, you’ll find it peopled with a wiiiiiide variety of characters, and Lewis jumps back and forth between them, each with a unique voice that doesn’t feel juggled, and considering there’s a LOT of jocular banter going on? That Lewis does it with such smooth ease is really saying something. ‘Got so I done start’d aspeakin’ with a twang m’self. Seriously, the man’s narration was THAT engaging!
Young Ruben is jauntily riding along when he comes upon an older gentlemen robbed and left for dead. Now, one thing you’ll get right quick is that Rube just naturally does the right thing. He done saves the man, Arliss, and then gets caught up in righting the wrong Arliss suffered. And thus, a deputy is born… for the moment… for a shootout which tests young Rube… and kills his horse (And you know me, I had to pause to mourn the horse for a sec).
After that, the story goes a hundred miles a minute, with repugnant Sheriff’s doings, deputies doing the Sheriff’s bidding, townsfolk looking for a hero. And who should it be but the young buck who’s gettin’ to being a man right quick? There’s violence; there’s grit; there’s romance; there’s friendship. But mostly there’s the truest humor, the funniest lines, that I’ve heard in a long time. I was grinning, then outright smiling, then laughing out loud at some of the turns of phrase Lewis writes, at some of the observations the characters make. TOTAL Winner, and I’d been looking for a new series to get into.
Thought it might be Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle series.
Turns out, gonna have to add an AWEsome Western to my Listening also…!
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.