Brimstone

BRIMSTONE picks up where RESOLUTION left off. Virgil is searching for the woman he loves, Allie French, who ran off a while back with another man. We first met Allie in APPALOOSA when she arrived in town with dreams of being a saloon singer and piano player. She won Virgil’s heart, even as it became apparent that she had no musical talent whatsoever. Everett and Virgil spend a year wandering through every little camp settlement looking for Allie. When BRIMSTONE begins, we learn that Allie’s dreams have died hard. Everett spots her first in the little Texas town of Placido, “which had a railroad station, and one saloon for every man, women and child in town.” Hitch says: “I looked at the whores. It was hard in the dim light, and I almost missed her. The pink dress was dirty. Her hair was ratty. She was a lot thinner than she had been, and the body that had once pushed at the confines of her dress now seemed shrunken inside her clothes…I went back into the despondent street feeling tired and tight across my shoulders.” Both men, of course, rescue Allie, and they all flee to the town of Brimstone to start anew. Virgil and Everett take jobs as deputies. But much of the book revolves around the question that Virgil wrestles with: Can Allie change? Can anybody ever change? And that gives this western a unique psychological dimension.