This easily-flowing gem by Sheila Allee started as an inquiry into Ms. Allee’s family tree and ended up as a tightly crafted tale of a local incident that illustrates the narrow space between benevolent bossism and violent, self-serving tyranny. It tells of a land that really had not changed much (other than the makes and models of the transportation) from classic Westerns to Bonnie and Clyde, and would not for another 20 years or more (see The Last Picture Show). For the naifs who never made it past Civics 101, it is just as well that the characters are real because, as is often the case, in politics the truth is far stranger than fiction. If you are a Texan interested in politics or history, then you need to buy this book. If you are an academic interested in local politics or the spoils system, you should buy this book and assign it to your classes for reading. Yet these are not the greatest strengths of the book.
It is probably not the author’s intent to broaden the story beyond its Texas setting, but if you live outside that great state then you will see that Texas as described here is only different in shades from the one-party states that litter the land to this day. One might think that tiny, green, urban, urbane Maryland in the 1990’s could not be more different from vast, dry, rural, good-ole-boy Texas in the 1900-1950 period. One would be quite wrong. My exposure to the one-party state in Maryland not a decade ago showed an entire machinery built to maintain the positions of those who had power. With legislature, executive, and judiciary integrated in a one-party web of cronyism, where would the citizen turn for redress? Maybe nobody got shot, but the Maryland Governor’s election of 1994 was ultimately resolved by a high court whose members were all appointees of the incumbent’s party and coincidentally didn’t find anything amiss about an election with overall turnout of around 45% but precincts that cast over 100% of their total registration numbers for the incumbent.
When this much of the moral fabric has been torn, how far is it to the next step? Whether it is Medieval Europe, 1948 Texas, or Russia in any period, it is a short and slippery slope from paternalistic bossism to totalitarian repression. You, the citizen, do not stand a chance in this game. Know when to fold ’em. Yes, they CAN kill you, if not physically (and don’t count on that), then legally, financially, and reputationally. And they will. The odds of an honest Captain Allee happening along to solve the crime are pretty slim, and you, as the destroyed victim, will not return from the dead anyway.
Texas Mutiny: a great read and a fine story. And, if you want a real-world example of “abuse of power”, now you can look it up.
https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Mutiny-Bullets-Ballots-Boss/dp/0972046623