Ever since I first heard of Bass Reeves, I have wanted to write about him, and make Bass come alive to readers.
This book moves back and forth among three sections that discuss the facts of Bass’s life and times, and three imagined sections that follow him from his boyhood until he was an old man. I shaped the book this way because there was so little written about Bass Reeves in his day. Most information about him in books is based on word of mouth. There aren’t many accounts to refer to beyond a few newspaper articles and records of the arrests he made. The fictional sections are based on events in Bass’s life, as well as my own experiences riding, hunting and living rough in the West. The part about his boyhood is the longest because to me it was the most important part of his life, the fire that forged him.