The Son

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The Son spans 150 years and five generations of a south Texan family, the McCulloughs, from their pioneering white settler forefathers to present-day oil tycoons. Taking as its epigraph Gibbon’s wry observation from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on “the vicissitudes of fortune”, it is primarily the story of Eli, later known as the Colonel, the first male child born in the new Republic of Texas. The profound impact of 13-year-old Eli’s 1849 abduction by the Comanche Indians who murdered his family plays havoc with subsequent generations. Simultaneously, Meyer writes with forensic intensity of the Comanche, whose decimation during this period was as much due to exposure to the white incomers’ diseases as to battle loss and the scarcity of buffalo. Having been wrenched from all he knows, Eli adapts boldly to his new life, ending up as the adopted son of the chief, Toshaway. When the tribe eventually succumbs to illness and hunger, Eli, forcibly returned to white society, is rootless. Meyer sensibly confines the narrative to three characters: Eli, his son Peter, and Peter’s great-niece, Jeannie. The sole female centre stage in a book where women remain largely on the periphery, Jeannie serves as the lonely mainstay of the McCullough empire.