Si Dunn. For nearly 50 years, Austin writer Jan Reid's nonfiction books, novels and magazine articles have focused mainly on topics related to Texas, the American Southwest and Mexico.
When I first saw the novel's title, I assumed the book would be a 19th-century Western, possibly involving the Younger Brothers, outlaws who had had a few scrapes in Texas but did their bigger crimes elsewhere.
Sins of the Younger Sons does, in fact, involve outlaws. But here's the surprise: It's set in 20th-century Basque Country, the long-troubled area of northern Spain and southwestern France that is divided by the western end of the Pyrenees and by multiple dialects of the Basque tongue, which has roots in no other known language.
Some of the key characters in Reid's engrossing, enlightening new book are Basque separatists, members of the feared ETA, or Euskadi ta Askatasuna("Basque Homeland and Freedom" — or "Liberty" in some translations). The time frame is the mid-1990s, and the ETA has been battling Spanish authorities since 1959, using bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and other violent events to try to win independence for the Basque Country.
Nonetheless, a Texan is central to the book: Luken "Luke" Burgoa, an ex-boxer and ex-Marine with Texas Basque roots. He was raised Basque "inside the fences of a ranch." But: "To the neighbors, I'm just another South Texas Mexican." Luke now is trying to pass himself off in the rugged mountains as an American muleteer, souvenir merchant and dealer in illicit weapons, including Soviet-made sniper rifles.
Actually, Reid writes, "Luke was now an agent for a U.S. intelligence agency he called the Outfit. He was working non-official cover, which meant that if anything went wrong on this operation, he had no diplomatic immunity. The Outfit might try to help behind the scenes, but its officials would deny all knowledge of his activities. Police in three countries might charge him with violations of international law. Yet the Outfit thought it best to send him traveling under his own name and using his own passport. For coded messages they had assigned him a cryptonym, LIONHRT. He wondered if that was supposed to mean 'lion heart' or 'lion hurt.'"
Luke speaks the Basques' Navarrese dialect reasonably well, plus South Texas Spanish and some French. Any one of these tongues, however, could get him killed if he happened to be in the wrong place or with the wrong faction at the wrong time.
Luke's pack-mule mission is to get close to, and report on, a man named Andoni Peru Madariaga. In Reid's detail-rich thriller, Madariaga is "máximo dirigente, the leader of the separatist and terrorist organization ETA...About forty men were thought to be members of the zuzendariak, ETA's executive committee, but Madariaga controlled the weapons and the money. He was wanted in Spain for everything from assassination to sabotage of a nuclear power plant," Reid writes.
The Texan's assignment quickly goes awry. Madariaga has little faith in Luke's cover story and demands that Luke produce something more than sniper rifles. The ETA leader wants to stage a stunning assassination in Madrid, and he needs Soviet-made grenade launchers of an especially devastating type. The Outfit cannot, and would never, provide them. So Luke must stall for time.
Meanwhile, Madariaga's wife, Ysolina, a former academic and environmental activist, is tired of living on the run and having Spanish warrants out for her arrest. She wants a more normal life, with children. But her husband remains committed to ETA.
She warms quickly to Luke, adding more danger to his life and mission.
Disclosure: I was a close friend of Reid during part of the 1970s and early 1980s, before our careers took different directions. Since then, I have remained an observer of his work. And I know he puts considerable research and writing effort into his manuscripts.
Reid describes his new book as "historical fiction partly based on fact." Sins of the Younger Sons vividly takes us into a world few of us have seen and into a bitter conflict most of us have never considered nor understood.
Si Dunn is a longtime reviewer of books dealing with Texas, the American Southwest and military history.
Sins of the Younger Sons
Jan Reid
(TCU, $32.50)
Plan your life
Jan Reid will discuss Sins of the Younger Sons at 7 p.m. Aug. 24 at Interabang Books, 10720 Preston Road, Dallas.
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