El Paso: A Novel

Book excerpt: Bestseller • Southern Independent Booksellers Association Bestseller • Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Three decades after the first publication of Forrest Gump, Winston Groom returns to fiction with this sweeping American epic. Long fascinated with the Mexican Revolution and the vicious border wars of the early twentieth century, Winston Groom brings to life a much-forgotten period of history in this sprawling saga of heroism, injustice, and love. El Paso pits the legendary Pancho Villa against a thrill-seeking railroad tycoon known only as the Colonel—whose fading fortune is tied up in a colossal ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico. But when Villa kidnaps the Colonel’s grandchildren and absconds into the Sierra Madre, the aging New England patriarch and his son head to El Paso, hoping to find a group of cowboys brave enough to hunt down the Generalissimo. Replete with gunfights, daring escapes, and an unforgettable bullfight, El Paso becomes an indelible portrait of the American Southwest in the waning days of the frontier, one that is “sure to entertain” (Jackson Clarion-Ledger).