Review by New York Times Review
Theodore Roosevelt's acerbic daughter Alice suggested that her father wanted to be "the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening." To this we must add the hero of every novel. Teddy's cry of "Ya-ha-hawww!" punctuates the prose of "The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King," exclamation being the default choice of voice for "Teedie," who narrates his life from his childhood in Manhattan until his elevation to the presidency. As a writer/ventriloquist, Charyn has written works "by" Abraham Lincoln and Emily Dickinson, productions in which the audience can occasionally see the performer's mouth move. Teddy is a fraught choice for biographical treatment these days, a trustbusting conservationist who was also a big-game hunter with a dubious view of racial equality, appearing almost buffoonish behind his pincenez and buck teeth. But Charyn's empatille first-person strategy keeps the tone sprightly positive, undercutting the braggadocio with paradoxical self-deprecation. On the celebrated charge of the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, for example, Teddy loses his eyeglasses and can't seem to locate one of the many extra pairs that have been sewn into his uniform. He is rescued by an aide with yet another spare pair. Yet he is, undeniably, a marvel. As a little boy, he makes himself expert at imitating birdsong and keeps a seal skull and other artifacts in the malodorous "Teedie Roosevelt Museum of Natural History" in his bedroom. As an adult, he is "part cowpoke, part politician." Perhaps most telling is his infatuation with a pet cougar named Josephine. "Ya-hahawww!"
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 27, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Charyn, whose literary ventriloquist acts include such diverse voices as Jerzy Kosinski, Abraham Lincoln, and Emily Dickinson, here tackles the twenty-sixth president of the U.S. everything leading up to his presidency, that is. It's a picaresque novel, but then T. R. (or Teedie, as his parents called him) led a picaresque life, marked from beginning to end by restlessness and adventure. In a bluff narrative voice (and noting his subject's high-pitched speaking tone), Charyn gallops through Roosevelt's time as New York state assemblyman, North Dakota rancher and deputy sheriff, civil-service commissioner, police commissioner, lieutenant colonel of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, and governor of New York. The momentum is both the novel's strength and flaw. It's a ripping, enjoyable yarn, yet one senses a struggle to add heft and significance; passages about dreadful visions and regrets don't completely cohere into a fully realized character. Perhaps it's impossible to reinvent Roosevelt as Charyn did with Emily Dickinson in his remarkable The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson (2010) but this is a bully read, regardless.--Keir Graff Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Charyn ("Isaac Sidel" series) deftly employs the literary conceits of the dime novel with this rip-roaring tale of adventure and romance. Readers take a roller-coaster ride through the amazing life of Theodore Roosevelt, from his childhood escapades on the streets of Manhattan with his father, Brave Heart, to his heroic charge up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders, to his assumption of the presidency following the death of William McKinley in 1901. Teddy is the hero of this story, living up to the nickname of "Sinbad" affectionately bestowed on him by his wife, Edith. He is not only a one-man cyclone blowing through the political circus of his time but a champion of the environment, an adoring husband and father, and the beloved master of regimental mascot cougar Josephine. Charyn's Roosevelt is far from two-dimensional; a man whose compassion and concern for the less fortunate informed his daring deeds. VERDICT -Lovers of biographical historical fiction, especially fans of Roosevelt, will enjoy this novel peopled by real-life heroes and villains.-Barbara Clark-Greene, Westerly, RI © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A rendering of Teddy Roosevelt's early life that spotlights formative moments in colorful, entertaining episodes.The young boy saw a werewolf near his bed at night when an asthma attack came on. As Teddy narrates, his father would order up "the Roosevelt high phaeton with its pair of long-tailed horses" and let the wind fill Teddy's lungs in thrilling rides on the "scorched plains of Manhattan's Upper West Side." He was the youngest man in the state Assembly, where he says he wore "a pince-nez with a gold tassel, and a peacoat from my Harvard days." When he lost his mother and wife within hours of each other, he fled west, to Dakota territory, "with silver stirrups, a tailored buckskin suit, and a Bowie knife from Tiffany's." But he's pulled back to New York, where he becomes a police commissioner fiercely disliked for his blue laws and anti-corruption drive. He's rescued from a melee at the Social Reform Club by his new squad of bicycle cops, whose leader will join him in Cuba. Before Charyn (Jerzy, 2017, etc.) ends with President William McKinley's assassination, he gives the Rough Riders a big slice of the book not just for TR's famous hill charge, but for the reluctant leader who could scrounge for his troops and suffer whatever the men sufferedthough he also had a tent from Abercrombie Fitch. The prolific Charyn has written scripts for graphic books. With TR, there's a sense of the outsize characters of 19th-century dime novels, though without the hagiography. Roosevelt embodied contradictionsa privileged reformist, a cowpoke from Manhattan, an honest politicianand his private life was riddled by strife and loss.Charyn makes artful use of historical fact and fiction's panache to capture the man before he became one of the great U.S. presidents and a face on Mount Rushmore. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
