David Fuller (1) (1953–)

Sundance by David Fuller is a novel built around the premise that the Sundance Kid didn’t go to Bolivia with Butch Cassidy, instead he was arrested under an assumed name and spent 12 years in the state prison in Wyoming. It’s now 1913 and Harry Longbaugh is released into a very different world than the one he left. He is introduced to motor cars and electricity, worker’s unions and women marching for the vote. His first and only thought is to find his wife whom he hasn’t heard from in two years when her letters stopped. Doggedly following her trail, he finds himself in New York City.

Sundance is a clever and highly entertaining story of a man trying to find where he belongs while searching for the woman who holds his heart. He realizes that Etta has somehow gotten herself in trouble with the Black Hand gang and is leaving him obscure clues to help him find her.

The author has delivered a great story and I couldn’t help but picture an older, rugged Robert Redford as Harry Longbaugh. The character is written much the way I imagine the Sundance Kid would be and the author did a fine job of staying true to the character and the time period. An interesting fact to ponder is that while we are told that the real Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid died in Bolivia, when they opened the grave marked with their names in 1991, only one body was discovered and DNA analysis proved it was neither of the famous outlaws. So the legend lives on.… (meer)

I love westerns. That is why I was excited to read this book when I got a copy back when it was released. I started reading this book and got to about chapter 6 and then I had started to lose interest in the book. So I put is down which has ended up for about a year unread since that moment I put the book down. In an effort to try to dwindle my to be read pile and read some of my older books, I picked this book up again. I did not go back and re-read the first 5 chapters. I just started reading where I left off. After about reading 4 more chapters, I realized that while the background location, Etta, and Harry were fine, I had no real interest in anything that was really happening in the story. Plus, I found that the story seemed to drag on for long periods of time. I finally skipped ahead to the last chapter to see how the story ended. Which the ending was not bad.… (meer)

Sundance is the story of what might have happened if The Sundance Kid did not die when history says he did. Most of the story revolves around his search for his wife after he gets out of prison. The search takes him to the city where he sees things that he has never seen before. He is out of place in a world of electricity and automobiles. There is a lot of fish out of water, man out of time stuff. The idea may not be unheard of but the original setting gives it an interesting spin. The story is more of a mystery than anything else. Sundance has turned into more of a detective than a gunfighter. There is some action in the story but there is more following of clues than shooting going on. That's not necessarily a bad thing but I went in expecting a western and that is not really what I got. I did like the way he learns about his wife during his search for her; finding out what she has done and who she has become while he was in prison. I thought that was an interesting way to develop a character that you haven't even met. Unfortunately I had lukewarm feelings about just about everyone in the book and had trouble caring much about them. I think I would have liked it better if it was not about The Sundance Kid and just about some other gunfighter. It could have been much the same story and I would not have gone into it with expectations that were not met. It was not a bad story it was just not quite as exciting or as interesting as I had hoped.… (meer)