From Publishers Weekly
Launching the publisher's Callaloo series, dedicated to books by "writers of African descent," this corrosively funny and disquieting picaresque novel addresses the politics of identity and the racist brutality that marked America's westward expansion after the Civil War. Everett's ( Zulus ) vernacular narration is voiced by Curt Marder, an inveterate bigot and scamp whose "slender" education and conscience are brought into high relief when his house is burned and his wife kidnapped by bandits. Compelled to enlist a "tracker," an intrepid, mysteriously omniscient black man named Bubba, Marder sets off across God's country, a landscape of primeval beauty and frontier savagery. His episodic adventures in Native American camps and squalid cowboy towns, as well as an encounter with a cross-dressing Colonel Custer who eats raw meat and raves about "the Emasculation Proclamation," display the author's delight in the scoundrels and carnivalesque humor of the untamed frontier. The butt of countless practical jokes, Marder is dressed in war paint, tied to a stake and buried in the ground up to his neck, yet despite his affinities with other migratory and marginalized characters of the frontier, he suffers no crisis of conscience or moral maturity. For Everett is finally less concerned with psychological complexity than with the racist legacy of Manifest Destiny; shot through this novel's cartoonish surface, right up to its astonishing, larger-than-life denouement, his grave historical ruminations are less portentous and far more troubling. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Continuing a tradition of writing somewhat offbeat novels, Everett (Zulus, Permanent Pr., 1990) offers this droll but confusing plunge into the Western genre. Curt Marder, Union Army deserter and indolent homesteader, watches from a safe distance as white renegades pillage his farm, carry off his wife, and, worst of all, kill his dog. After hiring a tracker, an ex-slave named Bubba, he sets off to recover a wife for whom he cares little. This antihero's odyssey is repeatedly sidetracked, bringing him into contact with a wild assortment of Western characters. Through it all, only Bubba, like Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, retains a tenuous grasp on what is right, thus gaining Marder's grudging respect. Everett then turns that mildly noble development upside down in the novel's unsatisfying end. Though Bubba is an interesting character, the plot is convoluted and doesn't make a great deal of sense. Part of the publisher's series of books from authors of African descent, this is not a necessary purchase.Robert Jordan, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa CityCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
A fine and very funny satire of the Old West, a place where the "murder" of a man's dog elicits tears and support but the kidnapping of a woman isn't worth a mention. Everett tells his story through the eyes of Curt Marder, a wonderfully observant character, even if he is not always able to understand what he sees. Marder is a coward and a racist, and those are some of his better qualities. When his wife is abducted, Marder enlists the aid of Bubba, a black tracker, and together they seek out the band of white men dressed as Indians who have committed the kidnapping. What follows is a fine set of misadventures, including a bank robbery and a meeting with General Custer. A rare novel: laugh-out-loud funny, thoughtful, and shocking, by turns and all at once. Brian McCombie

From Kirkus Reviews
A politically incorrect rancher hires a black man named Bubba to track down the desperadoes who burned out his homestead and carried off his wife in this hilarious, biting sendup of the formula western. Everett (The One That Got Away, 1992, etc.) effectively lampoons the mythology of the Old West. When cowardly Curt ``Dirt'' Marder espies a band of ``Injun impersonators'' pillaging his home, he has ``half a mind to ride down that hill and say somethin', but it was just half a mind after all.'' Bubba, the best tracker in the territory, agrees to help Marder in exchange for half his homestead. Marder makes the deal, though he's pretty sure it's illegal ``for a nigger to own land.'' Of course, he loses all his property in a poker game, but he doesn't tell Bubba. They set out on the trail in the company of little Jake, a tow-headed boy whose ma and pa had been killed by the same bad guys. As the pointed silliness unfolds, Everett spikes the clich‚s of the Wild West with zest: A band of Indians gets the giggles when Marder greets them with a stern-faced, ``How!''; Army Sgt. Rip Phardt leads Marder to Col. George Armstrong Custer, who's later discovered in drag; and characters such as the grizzled Epiphany Jones and a Jewish cardsharp named Greenfield parade past. ``Damn if this frontier weren't just lousy with comedians'' writes the author. But Everett shows the dark side, too, with the rape and abduction of Jake; the brutal lynching of an innocent black teenager; the wholesale massacre of an Indian village by Custer and his soldiers on ``a killin' drunk''; and Marder's resolve to do his ``American duty'' about Bubba, ``a nigger what's gone wild.'' The abruptly downbeat, surrealistic ending doesn't work, but Everett's aim is generally true, and as a spoof, this tale hits the mark. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
For the first time in paperback, Everett"s "comic and fierce"* novel of the Old West The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. It"s 1871, and he"s lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. Withnothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder is forced to enlist the help of the best tracker in the West: a black man named Bubba. "I loved this book. God"s Country is like no western I"ve ever read before: a wonderfully strange and darkly hilarious brew of Kafka and García Márquez, of Twilight Zone and F-Troop, with cameo appearances by Walt Whitman and George Custer thrown in for good measure. Percival Everett has written a terrific book, a Wild West road trip that challenges our assumptions about what human dignity really means."—Bret Lott, author of Jewel: A Novel"An outrageously funny, alarmingly serious, highly enjoyable novel." —Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe"This wild novel of the West is comic and fierce, turn by turn; it follows white and black and red men down their several paths through God"s Country, and the reader tracks them with a sense of shocked delight." —*Nicholas Delbanco, author of What Remains"Mr. Everett is successful combining heart with rage. . . . The novel sears." —David Bowman, The New York Times Book Review Percival Everett is the author of eleven novels including the recent Erasure, which won the inaugural Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction. He lives with his wife on a small ranch and teaches at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. It's 1871, and he's lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder is forced to enlist the help of the best tracker in the West: a black man named Bubba.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Launching the publisher's Callaloo series, dedicated to books by ``writers of African descent,'' this corrosively funny and disquieting picaresque novel addresses the politics of identity and the racist brutality that marked America's westward expansion after the Civil War. Everett's ( Zulus ) vernacular narration is voiced by Curt Marder, an inveterate bigot and scamp whose ``slender'' education and conscience are brought into high relief when his house is burned and his wife kidnapped by bandits. Compelled to enlist a ``tracker,'' an intrepid, mysteriously omniscient black man named Bubba, Marder sets off across God's country, a landscape of primeval beauty and frontier savagery. His episodic adventures in Native American camps and squalid cowboy towns, as well as an encounter with a cross-dressing Colonel Custer who eats raw meat and raves about ``the Emasculation Proclamation,'' display the author's delight in the scoundrels and carnivalesque humor of the untamed frontier. The butt of countless practical jokes, Marder is dressed in war paint, tied to a stake and buried in the ground up to his neck, yet despite his affinities with other migratory and marginalized characters of the frontier, he suffers no crisis of conscience or moral maturity. For Everett is finally less concerned with psychological complexity than with the racist legacy of Manifest Destiny; shot through this novel's cartoonish surface, right up to its astonishing, larger-than-life denouement, his grave historical ruminations are less portentous and far more troubling. (May)

Library Journal