Breaking Even

by Elizabeth Fackler

Book Overview

In this superbly detailed frontier novel featuring Texas outlaw Seth Strummer, our hero at last achieves a humble form of justice that allows him to break even with his past. When Seth falls in love with Hekuba Free, the sister of Joaquin's new bride, he hides their love from his wife while flaunting it in town. It's a deadly game of retribution as Seth must face down sheriff Joaquin in a final battle between two old adversaries. The culminating novel...

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765343568
• ISBN13: 9780765343567
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.9" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Three novels in one.

This is an engrossing, at times chilling, novel, almost three novels in one. The first part deals with the "ugly" sister, Hekuba, who unwittingly falls in love with Seth Strummar, the irrestible rouge who is at the heart of all three parts of this novel. The second deals with Strummar's friend, Joaquin, and becomes almost a Cormac McCathyish quest-into-Mexico story. The third part is told from Seth's daughter, Elena's point of view, and it was this third part that put me off as a reader. I never connected with Elena the way I did with Hekuba and Joaquin. I also resented the short shrift given to Hekuba's death, when I had become so emotionally attached to her. But despite this and some minor anachronisms, particularly in the language, this is a whopping good page-turner which I have recommended it to others.

Poetic, stark portraits of social inequity on the frontier

I finished this book in the wee hours of the night--I couldn't put it down. I cried at the ending. Maybe because Elena might never race again, or because Seth was trying so hard to do the right thing, or because Hekuba lost so much. Most western fiction is concerned only with violence, but in the Seth Strummar series, the author asks all of the most probing questions of life. She certainly presents stark portraits of social inequity, yet the books are quite poetic. The continuing metaphors of the bullfight and macho were very effective in Breaking Even. I highly recommend all of Elizabeth Fackler's novels to anyone interested in character studies revolving around the great issues of life.

Poignant, exciting, true to the heart.

I loved this story. It's the most true-to-life and touching novel about friendship and family love which I've ever read. Joaquin and Seth are soul brothers. Elena broke my heart.