We're for Smoke: Outliers and Outlaws of Panther City
From Hell’s Half Acre to Quality Grove, We’re for Smoke: Outlaws and Outliers of Panther City tells the wild and woolly story of turn-of-the-century Fort Worth, a cow town on the cusp of becoming a modern industrial city. Told through a series of characters who made the papers for tangles with the law, ranging from high to low society and including black and white, male and female, perpetrator and victim, We’re for Smoke reveals a society scrabbling to emerge from the chaotic and often bloody growing pains of the frontier West.
We’re for Smoke takes as its jumping-off point actual newspaper accounts of the gunfights, jailbreaks, attempted lynchings, and riots that occurred in Panther City between 1904 and 1920. Nobles deftly weaves together stories of violence, rebellion, and the embedded racism of the time by imagining the scenes-behind-the-scenes among the main characters—who appear and reappear in historical news accounts in uncanny and often sinister ways. Readers and fans of The Son by Philipp Meyer, Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson, and Larry McMurtry’s Horseman Pass By will enjoy We’re for Smoke.
From Hell’s Half Acre to Quality Grove, We’re for Smoke: Outlaws and Outliers of Panther City tells the wild and woolly story of turn-of-the-century Fort Worth, a cow town on the cusp of becoming a modern industrial city. Told through a series of characters who made the papers for tangles with the law, ranging from high to low society and including black and white, male and female, perpetrator and victim, We’re for Smoke reveals a society scrabbling to emerge from the chaotic and often bloody growing pains of the frontier West.
We’re for Smoke takes as its jumping-off point actual newspaper accounts of the gunfights, jailbreaks, attempted lynchings, and riots that occurred in Panther City between 1904 and 1920. Nobles deftly weaves together stories of violence, rebellion, and the embedded racism of the time by imagining the scenes-behind-the-scenes among the main characters—who appear and reappear in historical news accounts in uncanny and often sinister ways. Readers and fans of The Son by Philipp Meyer, Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson, and Larry McMurtry’s Horseman Pass By will enjoy We’re for Smoke.
From Hell’s Half Acre to Quality Grove, We’re for Smoke: Outlaws and Outliers of Panther City tells the wild and woolly story of turn-of-the-century Fort Worth, a cow town on the cusp of becoming a modern industrial city. Told through a series of characters who made the papers for tangles with the law, ranging from high to low society and including black and white, male and female, perpetrator and victim, We’re for Smoke reveals a society scrabbling to emerge from the chaotic and often bloody growing pains of the frontier West.
We’re for Smoke takes as its jumping-off point actual newspaper accounts of the gunfights, jailbreaks, attempted lynchings, and riots that occurred in Panther City between 1904 and 1920. Nobles deftly weaves together stories of violence, rebellion, and the embedded racism of the time by imagining the scenes-behind-the-scenes among the main characters—who appear and reappear in historical news accounts in uncanny and often sinister ways. Readers and fans of The Son by Philipp Meyer, Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson, and Larry McMurtry’s Horseman Pass By will enjoy We’re for Smoke.