About The Book

With The Pistoleer, his debut novel on legendary Texas outlaw John Wesley Hardin, James Carlos Blake demonstrated a rare talent for western and historical fiction. Blake’s second book, The Friends of Pancho Villa, now back in print, further proved his mastery in the genre, taking on an even mightier figure of North American legend–the most memorable leader of the Mexican Revolution.

Violently waged from 1910 to 1920, the revolution profoundly transformed Mexican government and culture. And Pancho Villa was its “incarnation and its eagle of a soul”—so says Rodolfo Fierro, the novel’s narrator, an ex-con, train robber, and Villa’s loyal friend. Killers of men and lovers of life, the revolutionaries fought for freedom, for a new Mexico, for Villa. And in return they shared victory and death with their country’s most powerful hero. The Friends of Pancho Villa is a masterpiece of ferocious loyalty, bloody revolution, and legends that live forever.

Praise

“Blake blends fact and fiction into one of the few novels that risk political incorrectness by frankly describing the murder, betrayal, and deceit that turned a revolution against dictatorship into a civil war . . . This is not for the faint of heart, but then, neither is revolution.” –Publishers Weekly

“Blake makes excellent use of historical fact and legend.” –Kirkus Reviews