Name: The Gates of the Alamo
Price: 22.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Stephen Harrigan
ISBN: 9780525431817

A New York Times bestselling novel, modern historical classic, and winner of the TCU Texas Book Award, The Spur Award and the Wrangler Award for Outstanding Western Novel

It’s 1836, and the Mexican province of Texas is in revolt. As General Santa Anna’s forces move closer to the small fort that will soon be legend, three people’s fates will become intrinsically tied to the coming battle: Edmund McGowan, a proud and gifted naturalist; the widowed innkeeper Mary Mott; and her sixteen-year-old son, Terrell, whose first shattering experience with love has led him into the line of fire.

Filled with dramatic scenes, and abounding in fictional and historical personalities—among them James Bowie, David Crockett, William Travis, and Stephen Austin—The Gates of the Alamo is a faithful and compelling look at a riveting chapter in American history.

A huge, riveting, deeply imagined novel about the siege and fall of the Alamo, an event that formed the consciousness of Texas and that resonates through American history. With its vibrant, unexpected characters and its richness of authentic detail, The Gates of the Alamo is an unforgettable re-creation of a time, a place, and a heroic conflict.

The time is 1835. At the center of a canvas crowded with Mexicans and Americans, with Karankawa and Comanche Indians, with settlers of many nationalities, stand three people whose fortunes quickly become our urgent concern: Edmund McGowan, a naturalist of towering courage and intellect, whose life’s work is threatened by the war against Mexico and whose character is tested by his own dangerous pride; Mary Mott, a widowed innkeeper on the Texas coast, a determined and resourceful woman; and her sixteen-year-old son, Terrell, whose first shattering experience with love leads him instead to war, and into the crucible of the Alamo.

As Edmund McGowan and Mary Mott take off in pursuit of Terrell and follow him into the fortress, the powerful but wary attraction between them deepens. And the reader is drawn with them into the harrowing days of the battle itself.

Never before has the fall of the Alamo been portrayed with such immediacy. And for the first time the story is told not just from the perspective of the American defenders but from that of the Mexican attackers as well. We follow Blas Montoya, a sergeant in an elite sharpshooter company, as he fights to keep his men alive not only in the inferno of battle but also during the long forced march north from Mexico proper to Texas. And through the eyes of the ambitious mapmaker Telesforo Villasenor, we witness the cold deliberations of General Santa Anna.

Filled with dramatic scenes, abounding in fictional and historical personalities — among them James Bowie, David Crockett, and William Travis — The Gates of the Alamo enfolds us in history, and through its remarkable and passionate storytelling allows us to participate at last in an American legend.

“Historical saga comparable to Lonesome Dove and The Killer Angels…. [A] masterpiece.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“The historical novel at its best. . . . Harrigan [has] emerged as the leading Texan writer of his generation and an American writer of the first rank.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“The first great novel of the 21st century. . . . This is storytelling at its finest.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Engrossing. . . . Calls to mind the best of Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Deserves a place among the best books ever written about this legendary battle.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Riveting. . . . The strength of Harrigan’s extraordinarily authentic novel is its superior storytelling, no small accomplishment when a writer is looking down the hot barrel of history.” —The Washington Post

“An artful, intelligent novel. . . . Harrigan writes beautifully of the Texas landscape, and beautifully of the failures of the human heart.” —The Boston Globe

“[Here] a time and a place, a vanished world in which gallant death and honor still held tangible appeal, while merciless slaughter was more likely the rule, are evoked with great skill.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Harrigan captures how the Alamo transformed a scattered series of frontier conflicts into a legitimate revolution.” —Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down

“A Texas classic that will take its place on the shelf beside Lonesome Dove and All the Pretty Horses.” —Austin American-Statesman

“A genuinely moving epic.” —Newsweek

“Classic. The Gates of the Alamo tells the epic story of the legendary battle from both the Mexican and American perspectives.” —Margaret George, author of The Autobiography of King Henry VIII

“A splendid novel—gripping, humane and persuasive.” —Houston Chronicle

“Races like a wild mustang. . . . Call this one a page-whirlwind, a vast and vicious tale.” —Detroit Free Press

“A crackerjack good read.” —Texas Observer

“Succeeds in reinventing a tired American icon. Harrigan makes the Alamo worth remembering one more time.” —The Denver Post

“Let’s begin with the adjectives. Magnificent. Fabulous. . . Masterful both as pulsating tale and provocative history. “ —The Philadelphia Enquirer

The Gates of the Alamo

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