Woe to Live on

By Daniel Woodrell

Book Overview

Set in the border states of Kansas and Missouri, Woe to Live On explores the nature of lawlessness and violence, friendship and loyalty, through the eyes of young recruit Jake Roedel. Where he and his fellow First Kansas Irregulars go, no one is safe, no one can be neutral. Roedel grows up fast, experiencing a brutal parody of war without standards or mercy. But as friends fall and families flee, he questions his loyalties and becomes an outsider even to those who have become outlaws.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316206164
• ISBN13: 9780316206167
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully Written

They made a movie out of this book. It's called Ride with the Devil. It's okay. Not nearly as good as the book. Like in Eudora Welty's stories, it's not the plot that moves you, but the way the story is told. That's the case with this book. So if you've just seen the movie, you've missed the best part of the piece--the author's voice.

And so on and so on.

Great book. Great film. BTW; The book is still available under the title "Ride With The Devil."

A wonderful use of the English language

I love to read history of any sort but I'm not particularly interested in the American Civil War or the "border wars" that accompanied it. Having said this, I could hardly put this book down. Woodrell writes as easily as a canary sings and is as evocative in his language as a Sunday preacher. Some readers may reel from the sheer volume of casual violence in this book but, after all, that is what it was like during this period of time and wishing it didn't happen doesn't make it go away. Remarkably, I didn't find the story line particularly significant and the ending won't make you gulp; it is the individual people, not the events --- not even the gangs --- that take center stage. I found that character development and the use of language set in the tapestry of the times the most engaging aspects of this remarkable book.

Border War as Black Powder Drive-By Shooting Spree

"Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!" 16 year old Jake and his friends may not be able to quote the bard, but these teenage hardcases know too much about havoc. You can get a dollars worth of bitterness for only a nickel hereabouts. The war in Kansas and Missouri that raged for years before and after the 'War of North Aggression' left a lot of scars on this edge of the prairie. There weren't a lot of major battles, nothing you had to learn about in school. Just a neverending campaign of mutual retaliation. Casual hangings, work-a-day shooting sprees, ordinary assassinations, mundane decapitations. Even a not-so-ordinary arson where the yankee's burned a warehouse full of captured Southern women in Kansas City. Oops! You know, your ordinary border war. Ho-hum stuff. Payback for payback, ad nauseum. 20 years of Guerilla warfare waged mainly by teenage boys in cowboy hats. Make 'em wear ballcaps backwards while chanting YO and flashing gang signs, and it could be your town, today. In case you didn't think a border war between a couple of bland midwestern states had any relevance to your life...wise up, pilgrim. Read Woe to Live On, you might spot some of those mistakes History professors were always warning you to learn from, or be doomed to repeat. You know, like "Lather, rinse, repeat." This is good stuff, Woodrell is a master at dialect, and his grasp of the underlying hopelessness of this conflict rings true. I advise you to read it before the movie gets here. Get it the way Woodrell meant it, before some scriptwriter tries to make you believe this mess was all about slavery. Yeah, slavery drew a line in the sand between "Freestate" Kansas and "Secesh" Missouri. But how 'bout those poor neutral immigrant rascals standing on the wrong side of that silly line when a batch of masked riders rides up? Not everyone had a dog in the fight, but guess what? Once the payback starts, there isn't a lot of time for sorting out believers from nonbelievers. Ho Hum. Tie him to that wagonwheel, set the wagon on fire, lets ride into town, I hear they got a real purty gal working at the dry goods store. That attitude makes for a real unhealthy environment, maybe this is the sort of thing your professor wanted you to clue in on. This war out here wasn't about noble causes. There weren't many thin grey clad lines valiently crashing into blue clad hordes. We just had a lot of victims, lots of 'em hanging til they turned icky green. Blue and Grey means less than live or dead. I got one request. Next time this country decides to settle a noble cause by choosing straws and flailing away at itself...y'all go do it somewhere else. This border is closed for repairs.

Brutal and Powerful

When a friend recommended this novel to me, about a year ago, I didn't have very high expectations. I thought that it would be a very sensational and sappy story like so many war novels that never quite capture the true grittiness and tragedy of war. But I was really blown away by this effort that is honest, powerful, and captivating with its brisk prose and developed characters. Definitely worth picking up!