Rope Walker: A Texas Jewish History Mystery is not easily categorized. I’ve tried. It’s a book about many things. I don’t find that a problem, and readers with an expansive tolerance for the uncategorizable will not find it a problem, either.
It certainly seems to be about truth–the truth about a tightrope artist, with but one leg, and his gravestone, with but two words: “Rope Walker.” It’s about the truth in stories we hear and the stories we tell. It’s about historical accuracy. Rope Walker gives an honest assessment of what is known and what is not known about a particular local tragedy that happened 137 years ago. Other historical recollections, especially those where the facts about events long ago are murky, tend to add unverified details that may be true, or could be true, without considering the possibility that those details might also be wrong. In this history I try try not to simply repeat something as fact where that something is not certain. If there is uncertainty, I prefer to lay it out for readers to consider, to let them decide, in the end, if they want to believe it or not.
Rope Walker is about remembrance, leaving something behind after our exit from this world. It’s about making the most of our time here, taking risks because at some point we’ll be gone, one thing that is certain.
But the foregoing is nothing like the “elevator pitch” I’ve given for the book. Conventional advice is that an author should be able to describe his book with one concise sentence, two tops. Additionally, there should be one or more books an author can point to as comparable to his own book. Further, there should be a through line, a logical and consistent progress of topic and tone from start to finish. All true and good advice, but none of it is necessary to make an entertaining and informative read.
Some of the greatest books ever written contain a mix of tones, topics, realities, voices, timeframes, grammar, and other literary inventions. That also goes for songs, poems, clothing, and all other artistic expression. At the same time, having a consistent theme, or plot, or rhythm, or attitude, throughout a piece of art, helps to keep an audience focused and engaged. I like to think of the song, “A Day in the Life,” by the Beatles, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the famous poem by T.S. Elliot (actually, as I see it, the former was inspired by the latter).
With that said, as explanation, perhaps as an excuse, here is how I have tried to describe Rope Walker: A Texas Jewish History Mystery, without looking like I’m bucking convention too much, and certainly acknowledging I’m no James Joyce or Philip Roth.
- A 19th century historical legend is examined to see if it is based on facts and to the extent it is based on facts present the reliable sources for historical evidence of those facts.
- The known, provable facts related to the death of a tightrope walker in 1884 in Texas.
- The known, provable facts related to a gravestone for said tightrope walker, which was and still is engraved with just two words, “Rope Walker.”
- A pioneer Texas Jewish community in a small Texas city, Corsicana.
- The person who has for 138 years been known as “Rope Walker,” a near-mythical character who died in Corsicana after he allegedly fell from a tightrope. His name is revealed after a third of the book, and as a mystery, it will not be given here.
- The so-called “Lost Cause.”
- Justice.
- Jewish-Christian relations.
- Orthoepy. No, just kidding there.
- Abe Mulkey, a turn-of-the-century evangelist from Corsicana.
- The brilliance of Moby Dick, “It is so passing wonderful!”
- Life
- Death
I could have written a very different book. I could have chosen any, or a few of those topics developed organically out of my discovery, one late December evening five years ago, of the name of an unknown man.
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