The Gates of the Alamo

Dates Covered: 1825 - 1836
ISBN: 0679447172
HH Rating:

Our Take

Summers in Texas are miserable -- depending on where you stake your claim, it's either hot and wet, or very hot and bone dry. We barely sweat them out with the help of modern technological wonders like central air, cheap beer, and suburban swimming pools. The summer heat brings with it another season of action-packed blockbusters at the local googolplex, where we hide from the sun in the frigid darkness slumped in the stadium seating, picking popcorn bits from our teeth and slurping ten gallon Cokes. Or, failing that, we pick up great big historical novels and wallow in their fluff.

Stephen Harrigan's The Gates of the Alamo has all the parts required for a formulaic Hollywood summer flick: surly anti-hero, strong-willed widower, angst-filled teenager, charismatic villain, guns, blood, a couple of love triangles, and a climatic shootout. It is full of patriotic vigor, pitting the scrappy and out manned 'Texians' vs. the evil might of the Mexican army commanded by Santa Anna.

The Alamo focuses on the fictional story of Mary Mott, a widow running an inn on the Texas Frontier, her son Terrell, and a naturalist named Edmund McGowan. McGowan has dedicated his life to studying the flora of Texas, and is nearing middle age without having enjoyed the pleasures of the opposite sex. Apparently even back then, botanists didn't get much play, although McGowan seems to enjoy it. As characters go, he's a bit of milquetoast, but in his waffling on the subject of Texas revolution recalls a key point: few wars, even this one, are unanimously supported by their participants.

The building tension between the Mexican government and the Texan settlers is revealed through guests staying at Mary Mott's inn, which turns into an impromptu recruiting center for the Texan cause. While the shenanigans among the fictional rabble ensue, real historical figures Houston and Travis compete to head newly-forming country. There are also plenty of cameos from historical figures such as David Crockett, Sam Houston, Jim Bowie, William Travis, and General Santa Anna -- all very familiar names to public school students in Texas who spend a whole year studying Texas history.

The first half of the novel introduces the characters and sets up the struggle between the settlers in Texas and the Mexican government. It captures the feel of daily life on the frontier, where people worried about staying alive while fighting off the weather, wild animals, hunger, and Indian attacks, instead of how much Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston spent on their wedding. Frontier Texas has a justifiably nasty reputation, and all sorts of unpleasantries were commonplace. The book spends several chapters wandering around the prairie, and eventually ends up at an old mission in the middle of nowhere. The battle of the Alamo might be the most famous of the Texas legends, but the actual fighting does not begin until almost four hundred pages into the 575 page book.

Harrigan's work is historical fiction, and his research turned up some new information that caused a bit of ruckus, as these new accounts indicate some of the celebrities of the Alamo were not as heroic as they appear in textbooks or John Wayne movies. The legend of the Alamo has always said that the defenders fought to the last man, sacrificing themselves for their cause -- very poetic, but probably untrue. The defenders were trying to hold off a force that greatly outnumbered them, in a poorly chosen stronghold. Once the shells started following, some of the defenders tried to run or surrender rather than face the bayonets and muskets of the Mexican army under Santa Anna's orders that all the prisoners be killed. Harrigan saw fit to embellish the number of people actually at the Alamo, and, as it's a work of historical fiction, the number of people who escaped, too. What really went down at the Alamo is sufficiently murky that you could pretty much say Hannibal and some elephants showed up and get an historian somewhere to argue your case.

We feel The Gates of the Alamo is a great summer book to read by the pool or on a long plane flight. You get caught up in the revolutionary fervor, but still feel good because all the main characters live through the carnage or sacrifice themselves in an appropriately noble manner. It's like a good summer blockbuster -- it's worth a few hours of your time, but it's not going to change your life.

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