The Winter Family

February 23, 2015
Jackman’s novel is a blood-soaked historical western covering over three decades of mayhem, from the Civil War to 1900 Los Angeles. There are no good guys here, just killers, thieves, liars, crooks of every stripe, and piles of victims—killed in numerous ways. The Winter Family is a gang of vicious killers and renegade Union soldiers, formed in 1864, during the Union Army’s destructive march through Georgia and the Carolinas. Led by Augustus Winter, the most cold-blooded of all, the gang robs, rapes, and butchers everyone they meet—even the other Yankees are appalled at their brutality. Augustus eventually leads the marauders in postwar fights with carpetbaggers and the Ku Klux Klan, before being hired as political leg-breakers in Chicago during the corrupt and violent 1872 elections. Winter and his trigger-happy pals are too effective in fomenting election-day violence and have to flee Chicago, stopping just long enough to torture and murder their hapless benefactor. The gang spends the ensuing years raiding the west, from Canada to Arizona, though by 1891 a showdown in Oklahoma finds the law, and internal betrayal, whittling the gang’s numbers down considerably. The strength of the story is Jackman’s vivid portrayal of men who choose violence and lawlessness as their way of life, and the justifications they create to rationalize their immoral behavior. This is a chilling tale.