All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone

by John J. Jacobson

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Pages: 352

Date of Publication: February 23, 2021

Categories: Historical Fiction / Action Adventure / Western

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All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone is the rollicking adventure story of Lincoln Smith, a young Texan living at the beginning of the twentieth century, who thinks of himself as the last true cowboy. He longs for the days of the Old West, when men like his father, a famous Texas Ranger, lived by the chivalric code. Lincoln finds himself hopelessly out of time and place in the fast-changing United States of the new century. When he gets his heart broken by a sweetheart who doesn’t appreciate his anachronistic tendencies, he does what any sensible young romantic would do: he joins the French Foreign Legion. On his way to an ancient and exotic country at the edge of the Sahara, Lincoln encounters a number of curious characters and strange adventures, from a desert hermit who can slow up time to a battle with a crocodile cult that worships the god of death. He meets them all with his own charming brand of courage and resourcefulness.

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Want to be taken on a wild adventure? Imagine a cross between James Bond and Macgyver, throw in the Wild West and North Africa, and the result will be this book.

“I like gettin’ out and see what’s stirring with the new day, while it’s still fresh and wild, before others get a chance to mar it’s newness.”

I started reading this book and wasn’t sure what to expect. We meet Lincoln Smith, a young man that loses his father to some outlaws in the wild west of Texas in the late 1800s. His father was a role model for Lincoln and he did his best to emulate his father all his life. I have to admit I could relate a little bit to Lincoln and how he did not like things to change. He didn’t like the trains coming through his town and definitely did not like the horseless carriages he encountered as a young man. He even says he was born too late and should have been born about 50 years earlier.

Lincoln decides after a Wild West show closes that he is going to join the French Foreign Legion to see places he has only heard of and places he hasn’t. We have all heard of this outfit and I have to admit, I really don’t know much about them other than they are a military organization. Apparently, this organization still exists and I could find myself going down a rabbit hole reading about the group but stopped myself. Anyway, Lincoln makes his way to France to join up in the early 1900s and meets Jake and Johnny, two men that will have his back more times than he can count. What follows is their adventure.

Lincoln has some crazy good luck throughout the book. He manages to wriggle his way out of tough situations and while it may seem impossible, it is what made this book so fascinating to me. I think Lincoln is a bit naive and could have easily been taken advantage of (and probably was a few times) but luckily he met various characters that took him under their wing and watched out for him.

There is one character that I didn’t like at first but came to admire and that is Amanda. She is the daughter of an Ambassador and she is very hard-headed and insists on doing what she wants despite the potential danger. But I think that is what attracts Lincoln to her and there could be a romance brewing but only time will tell.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and once the action really picked up about halfway through the book, I had a hard time putting it down. Sure, some of it may seem impossible but that is the great thing about books, they make the impossible possible and let us imagine a world other than our own.

We give this 5 paws up.

Though John J. Jacobson didn’t join the French Foreign Legion after being jilted by a girlfriend, or over his displeasure of missing the last great cattle drive, he has, borrowing Churchill’s phrase, lived a rather variegated life. He was born in Nevada, grew up in the West, surfed big waves in Hawaii, circled the world thrice, survived the sixties and seventies, corporate America, and grad school. Among other degrees he has an MA in Renaissance literature from Claremont Graduate University.

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FIVE WINNERS each receive a print copy of

All the Cowboys Ain’t Gone.

(US Only. Ends midnight, CDT, March 19, 2021.)

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