Apart from its forehead-wrinkle of a title, this book aims to please: hair-rising battles, narrow escapes, and a heaping portion of adventure, in a tale of hardnosed leaders and men who suffer them.
The Evening Post, March 8, 1947
“Books for Thought,” by Sam Hall Mitchell
The Quick and the Dead
Author Harrison Shepherd, the diffident but talented prodigy who last year brought us Vassals of Majesty, has another winning turn based on historical fact in ancient Mexico. In Pilgrims of Chapultepec, the Aztec people are driven from their ancestral home in a journey with more twists than a Chinaman’s queue. By its end, the author has tackled some surprising themes, including the atom-bomb question.
These pilgrims hike for decades, pushed by a mad king who always promises happiness is just around the bend. The author’s “Studs Lonigan” is an Indian youth named Poatlicue, watched by the jealous king as he hones his skill in battle. Golden boy Poatlicue was singled out by the gods at thirteen to hurl the first atl-atl—a razor-sharp flying weapon put in the hero’s hand as he was about to die in his first battle. In a New World Deus ex machina, the weapon was carried to the hero by an eagle.
The ruthless king fears an upstart’s power to unseat him, and offers a bargain: if Poatlicue maintains his loyalty without a hitch, he’ll someday help rule the nation. But “someday” never comes, and Poatlicue grows a cynical stripe, doubting the value of following an unwise leader. On dark nights he wonders if the gods chose him for a reason: to behead the sniveling king, and rule in his place?
Poatlicue even questions the seductive power of his atl-atl. His tribesmen revere it as a god, rushing to make replicas of the weapon, worshipping it on an altar, believing it will grant them absolute rule. But Poatlicue notes a worrisome trend: as his tribesmen reproduce the blade’s design, so do their enemies. Having perfected it, they fashion harsher weapons. With each battle the death numbers grow higher, the killing tools more precise.
Just as we’ve lately been warned by Bernard Baruch’s somber report to Congress, these pilgrims must choose between the quick and the dead, when fate gives them a dread power without means to stop its baleful use. Baruch argues for disposal of all atom bombs, while author Shepherd only calls the reader to wonder until the final page: has the sacred weapon saved those who wield it, or doomed them?
The Asheville Trumpet, April 8, 1947
Asheville Writer a Mystery
by Carl Nicholas
Here where Mountain Air is clearest and Heaven is the Nearest, our most prominent writer gives a taste of faraway places in Pilgrims of Chaltipica, a new book flying off the shelves this month of every bookstore in the nation. Mrs. Jack Cates, owner of Cates Bookshop, tells us Harrison Shepherd knows the ropes of his trade and this book will not disappoint. “We had a hubbub the week it came in,” she said. “Nobody wants to read anything but. And I’m going to warn you, it’s got more bare skin in it than a hot day at Beaver Lake.”
The author bases his books on his own experience growing up in Mexico, but has resided in the Montford Hills neighborhood since 1941. Calls from the Trumpet have not been returned. Mrs. Cates speculates he may regard his privacy, as “the most eligible bachelor in town, if not North Carolina.”
At the Asheville Skating Club next door to the bookstore, 21 comely lasses partook of our survey on the subject, with fifteen saying they are “Hep to Shepherd,” but definitely. Six maintained otherwise, “Spooky” and “cold cut” among the reasons given. Nine young ladies say they hold it against him for not serving in the armed forces due to a 4-F status, but the others say it was not his fault due to a perforated eardrum, the condition shared with crooner Frank Sinatra. All wondered how a well-heeled single fellow spends his time, as the author has sold nearly one million copies. As the old Asheville saying goes, Our moonshine is the meanest, our Stories are the keenest, our Sportmen are the gamest and—so it seems—our Bachelors are the Tamest!
The Echo, April 26, 1947
Pilgrims of Chapultepec, BY HARRISON W. SHEPHERD
$2.69, Stratford and Sons, New York
Don’t look now, but a new chump named Harrison W. Shepherd is more popular than Wendell Wilkie. His Pilgrims of Chaplutepec is storming the nation this month and sure to be translated abroad. Don’t be surprised one day if you hear they’re reading Harrison Shepherd in China.
This one will be snapped up by the movies, so read it now before you see the picture. The glittering backdrop of Mexico spreads across every page, and the young hero is a heart-throb, with good looks and a secret weapon to boot. Ladies, this one will break your heart. Will this author ever give us a happy ending?
Shepherd slathers emotion on the page, yet in real life he is a shy fellow who guards against any showing of his feelings. A friend who’s known him since college days revealed this mental reserve goes back to Shepherd’s short-pants days, when even at his mother’s funeral he remained cool as ice.
However, our source revealed, old friend Harry has one curious quirk: “He cannot look at a beautiful woman without whistling.”
April 30
It was the perforated eardrum that put the pepper on Mrs. Brown. And the whistling at girls. “This friend from college days. Is that a person?”
“I don’t think so. Given that I didn’t go to college. The people of my past are dead and gone, Mrs. Brown, that’s a fact.” Billy Boorzai’s huge hands, both of us suffocating with laughter, trying to keep still. An officer’s footsteps outside in the hall. Pounding hearts, scarlet shame.
“Who would reckon. The papers make things up out of the blue sky.”
“Or, they find a little rain cloud and help it along.”
She hesitated in the doorway, backlit from the upstairs hall in her square-shouldered, putty-colored suit. Platform shoes with ankle straps, oh my, and hair let out of its net today, pinned at the sides and curled at the shoulders, longer than I remembered. She looks like a tiny, earnest Jane Russell. Lately it’s crossed my mind to wonder if there is some fellow. She takes a midday break for errands and a bite in one of the luncheonettes on Charlotte. She could be meeting a sailor, for all I know.
“When you see a thing like this in print, Mr. Shepherd, people think it’s true. I almost think it myself, and that’s me, knowing better. How can they do it?”
“Somehow they manage, every day of the year. Why be surprised, just because this time the victim is me?”