WAYFARING STRANGER by James Lee Burke

Finished Su 6/9/10

This is a paperback that I bought at the library book sale on Sa 4/13/19.

The book is part of Lee's, 'Holland Series'. James Lee Burke is known for the Dave  Robicheaux character and this book deals with Weldon Avery Holland who is a cousin of Texas lawman Hackberry Holland.

It begins with a terrific scene where Weldon is sixteen years old and is at home in Texas with his aged grandfather. As a young man his grandfather went up against Bill Dalton and John Wesley Hardin. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and another couple camp on their land. Weldon and his grandfather figure out who they are (bullet holes in the car and an awareness of the news) and at the end of the chapter, Weldon fires a handgun at the car because one of the outlaws spits at his grandfather.

The the next big scene finds Weldon as a young man during WWII. He's caught behind enemy lines on the Western Front after the Battle of The Bulge with his friend, Herschel Pine. They find there way to a recently abandoned Nazi death camp where Weldon finds his future wife, Rosita Lowenstein. They get married and come back to the US.

“You’re an honorable and brave man,” “You’re my sister and lover and wife and mother and daughter and all good things that women are,” “You fill me with light when you’re inside me.”

Hershel comes up with a welding technique based on how the Nazi Tiger tanks were assembled. He applies this to pipelines and this is a fantastic improvement to move oil from the wells to where it's needed. Weldon and Hershel form, 'The  Dixie Belle Pipeline Company'.

Hershel marries a young naive woman named Linda Gail. This is a very beautiful girl who runs into a Hollywood producer and goes to Hollywood and becomes a star.

"....Linda Gail, a pretty, gaptoothed Bogalusa girl with ungovernable worldly ambitions. She yearns for the country club comforts of River Oaks, Houston’s wealthiest neighborhood, a place whose appeal is lost on her humble, hapless husband. River Oaks, in Weldon’s reckoning, is dangerous territory, the habitat of people like Roy Wiseheart, the charismatic but messed-up son of a nefarious H. L. Hunt-style oil baron, and of Roy’s scary wife, Clara, a snobby and anti-­Semitic “human tarantula.”

This opens up the novel to the wicked film industry and exposes the noble and good character of Weldon to this sleaze.

I loved the book and I found another novel of the Holland Series on my shelf and I will read it soon.