Book Review — "A Wind of Knives" by Ed Kurtz

I have a confession…

I have a soft spot for Westerns. Although I do not watch or read the genre much these days, I sort of grew up on them. I was raised in my grandparents’ home. So the living room TV was almost always on either Turner Classic Movies, AMC (back when they still played American Movie Classics), or the Encore Westerns channel. 

But in my youth, I must admit, I hated them. I found them so boring and repetitive. It wasn’t until a recent conversation with friends that I realized how influential cowboys were on my queer awakening. I dunno, I guess all those rugged men in tight clothes—lassoing and hogtying each other with long ropes and gagging each other with sweaty bandanas—left an impression. It also might be the genre with the most bathing scenes, come to think of it…

All things considered, Westerns are rather homoerotic, whether they’re trying to be or not. After all, you can only pack in so much machismo and camaraderie and bloodlust before gay stuff starts.

As a genre, Westerns also offer a gorgeous landscape for boundless thematic exploration. Like all great horror and science fiction, a good Western can brawl with any social matter and nail it with sharp-shooter precision. If it so chooses. Many of those stodgy films from my childhood, for instance, were perfectly fine with saying nothing of substance—which is probably why I found them so unbearable. 

Ed Kurtz’s novella A Wind of Knives, on the other hand, makes quite a statement, while weaving a heart-wrenching revenge tale. 

Vengeance is a common source of character motivation in the genre, but I’m not sure it’s ever been done like this. One evening, a pacifist rancher named Daniel Hays discovers his lover strung up from a juniper tree, naked. Lynched. Penis and testicles mangled. Teeth missing. Ass whipped until it bled… And since we’re talking Civil War-era Texas, the authorities deem this act of hate okay, because Steven Houpe was a sodomite, “a nellie. A fucker of men, you understand.”

The sheriff in fact advises Daniel to just get over it and move on, implying that he’ll probably be killed too if he doesn’t let it go. But Daniel finds that answer shitty and chooses to take justice into his own hands. 

As a storyteller, Kurtz is a masterful craftsman. His imagery is so poetically descriptive, with prose so rich that the terrain reads like a Thomas Cole painting looks—so epically rendered at times that it grows palpable. 

A Wind of Knives is told with a lot of elegance, but it’s not without its grit. Kurtz’s adept plotting is so visceral it’s uncanny. The author’s queer vision might be revisionist by nature, yet there’s no doubt that this is a brutal Western through and through. Kurtz does not shy away from the harshness of the realm.

Kurtz’s character work is also keen as hell. Chiefly, his protagonist’s relatability and development. Daniel Hays is not a rogue gunfighter type. He’s a peaceful man who carries with him a heavy cloud of sadness, as a depressed widower whose livelihood has been steadily on the downturn, and whose ranch-hand turned intimate companion has just been barbarically murdered. All the man wants is for a horrible wrong to be righted. But no one will see it done. So he holsters up and rides out.

In a way, I’m impressed he had the mental wherewithal in the first place. And the energy to keep going after each setback. 

Even the novella’s minor characters have depth. Particularly, a man named Nate who utters great trailer dialogue—lines that would inevitably end up in a hypothetical movie trailer. Nate says stuff like, “That’s the thing about revenge, in my view—it’s messy as all hell, never does go quite right,” then assures Daniel, “I hope you get your revenge… A man can’t be right when there’s somebody livin’ that oughtn’t be.” 

The dialogue is sharp and resonate. Obviously, I was not around in 1860s Texas—not in this lifetime, anyway—but the words certainly feel authentic. Some authors over-write regional speech, but Kurtz wisely keeps it real and highly readable. 

A Wind of Knives is made up of about 20,000 words. And Kurtz uses each and every one to push the fast-paced character-driven narrative they compose toward its highly satisfying conclusion. It helps that Daniel Hays is a compelling hero all along the way. I’ve always known that there had to be queer characters in the Old West. Unfortunately, their stories have largely gone untold. But thanks to Ed Kurtz, a great bisexual avenger gets his due.