My granddad used to watch movies on TV while constantly pointing out errors in their research. “They didn’t start wearing those… they didn’t call them that… no-one talked about this until… until…” It used to really frustrate me. I wanted to follow the story and didn’t mind mistakes unless they rendered the whole thing unbelievable. So why am I checking up on Reid Lance Rosenthal’s facts as I read Threads West? It’s probably just the weight of English culture catching up on me.
Threads West begins by following a group of disparate characters, from Prussia fields, to Colorado mountains, to Ireland, London and Liverpool. The SS Edinburgh will sail to New York in 1855, and the travelers will take the train on their Western trek. Poetic language describes the scenery beautifully, though the wealth of adjectives slows the reading sometimes. The author’s research is evident in the depth of detail—how long a voyage will take, how new the ship, even its name… But I’m thrown by a twenty pound coin tossed on a gambling table in Ireland, and by Aborigines recently freed in a London household. Fish and chips in the pub by the harbor feels such a modern reference I want to know when they were invented, and when pubs stopped being called beer-houses and inns. Perhaps if the characters had known less and showed more surprise I wouldn’t have felt that awkward urge to check.
By the middle of the book the many threads are beginning to come together. Characters meet. Mystery deepens. Relationships start to change. Love and violence, attraction acknowledged and denied, danger and folly, ship and train all combine to create the beginning of a fascinating tale. Unfortunately, to know more you’ll have to wait till more books come out, and the story doesn’t so much close as reach a convenient destination. We’ll go on by wagon train another day to continue a fascinating tale.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the Cadence group in exchange for an honest review