And anybody that don’t like a non-Native America man writing this tale can kiss the book’s ass.
Anybody that knows my reading tastes knows I hate Westerns for the most part.
I get that it primarily appeals to men, but the shit is just Americana Manifest Destiny propaganda, indoctrinating future white men into believing that they can be John Wayne up on a horse, shouting about pilgrims while bloodlustingly kill upping some Injuns, Chinamen and Darkies to expand America’s concept of imperialism and to get that sweet virginal white pussy waiting for them at the end of the story. Outside of the infamous Thomasine and Bushrod (which ain’t nothing but the Black cultural reappropriation of Bonnie and Clyde set in the last days of the west’s expansion), Posse (which is the greatest, realest, damn near exclusive historical fiction about Black cowboys ever) and Red Dead Revolver/Red Dead Redemption (which singlehandedly told the most heartbreaking stories of the old west ever but is one of the best stories ever done in a game), Westerns ain’t my cup of tea.
Enter . On a humbug I decided to read Medicine Woman, mostly because I was seeing some rufflings from virtue signaling spineless bitches (a term I got from the legendary ) always trying to start shit shitting on the novel because he, to my knowledge, is not Native American and people act as if you only can write about something if you’re race appropriate. That alone made me give the novel a chance, and I’m so glad I did.
Medicine Woman is the definitive classic of the Western genre.
The story is a masculine soap operatic wet dream. From the beginning we’re introduced to cowboy mountaineer Levi Thurston, who is having a bit of bad luck being hunted and wounded by an unknown band of scraggle Ute Indians doing a wild west jack move on him. When he gets himself together he sets out on a path to get his shit back from them, including his Sheba, a Comanche bred horse that he loves for dear life.
This path introduces him to an old Indian warrior that can’t speak good English and he can’t speak good Crow, but they figure it out. This is how he finds out that he has some type of curse on him that goes all the way back to his birth, and that the only way to remove it is to find the Medicine Woman, which the old warrior is more than happy to lead him to, which you find out about later.
The Medicine Woman is Apaniaki, the daughter of Black Crow, the chief of the Blackfoot Tribe. Her womanhood, if you want to call it that, is upon her, and she must marry. As the daughter of a chief, she is to be married to whomever her father chooses, though none of the men in her tribe tickle her fancy. A spiritual woman, she calls on the power of her spirit guides to help her avoid this fate, especially seeing what happens when women go their own way to be independent in their tribe through members like Shining Feathers.
Now this dude, Spotted Locust, looks like he’s in the running. He’s a complete package for a suitor since he’s completed manhood training, has quite a considerable amount of cattle (which is wealth in their tribe), and he’s quite the successful hunter. His cousin, Large Teeth – that motherfucker right there – ain’t happy about that because he’s a jealous bitch. That dude just starts setting a whole bunch of shit in motion trying to get in the running to marry Apaniaki, who is paying him dust, by the way, that he literally sets in motion the crash collision course of Apaniaki’s journey crashing into Levi’s.
Levi, through a series of unplanned misadventures, finally makes it to the Blackfoot to find Apaniaki, but Large Teeth’s habitual treachery to feed into his own greedy ego causes Apaniaki and Levi to forge their own path of destiny and defy the odds, for better or worse. A lot of shit goes down, of which I can’t even say any of it because it would be spoilers galore and you wouldn’t read the book, but trust and believe the story is going on all cylinders by chapter nine. The stakes are high, the action is intense, the shade is real and when its all said and done, like the old saying goes, you cannot fool around with mother nature nor can you play around with Medicine Woman.
Frank Kidd showed his entire ass with this novel. I read it in one go, then turned around the next day and re-read it again. It’s just that fucking good. In a perfect world, this novel would have already sold half a million copies, had a streaming deal on a major platform (and not none of that Tubi shit either), and he’d be working on a sequel. Hell, I’m half tempted to write fan fiction for this, because, as you know, I love a good villain and that Large Teeth – that dude needs an entire standalone with the shit he pulled in this novel.
Fuck Elmore Leonard’s old, tired ass westerns. Medicine Woman is where it’s at.
