The Legend of Bass Reeves : Being the True and Fictional Account of the Most Valiant Marshal In the West
School Library Journal Review: Gr 6 Up?Drawing on newspaper accounts and his own fertile imagination, Paulsen tells Reeves???s story. Brief sections give the known facts of this hero???s life, set in historical context, and longer, narrative sections (the longest being about his boyhood) fill out the details. The result is a compelling tale of the runaway slave who lived as a fugitive among the Creek Indians for 22 years, until the Emancipation Proclamation freed him to become a cattle rancher in Arkansas and, finally, a federal marshal appointed to help bring order to the Indian Territory. Bring order he did, with thousands of arrests and 14 gunfights to his credit. Paulsen doesn???t romanticize the Wild West or flinch from descriptions of the lawlessness (including murder and prostitution) that was rampant in the Territory, but this dark backdrop only serves to illuminate Reeves???s heroism. The protagonist is a fully fleshed-out character whose story is made all the more satisfying by the truth behind it.?Laurie Slagenwhite, Baldwin Public Library, Birmingham, MI Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.