The Territory

by Bradley Denton Read by Jared Doreck playing time: approximately 122 Minutes / ISBN: 1-884612-44-X / price: $17.99 / 2 CDs In this alternate history tale Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, joins up with a sordid band of confederate bushwackers to avenge his brother's death at the hands of the Kansas Red Legs. He manages, all the while, to raise his own brand of hell! According to the author, the greatest moment in American literature occurs in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when Huck says - "All right, then, I'll go to hell." Bradley Denton's goal as a storyteller is to give his audience that same kind of epiphany. excerpt

Review

Writers of alternate histories love to ask "what if?". So, what if during the Civil War a young and impressionable Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) fell in with such historic scoundrels as Frank James, Cole Younger, and Colonel William Quantrill as they planned the infamous 1863 Lawrence [Kansas] Massacre to avenge their Southern-sympathizing Missouri Bushwhackers against the hated Kansas Red Legs? Jared Doreck reads with a youthful energy and intensity. His Southern accents get a little shaky at times, but his eagerness carries the day. Like most good alternate histories, this story gives one pause to think, and gives one reason to find a history book and look up what really happened. B.P. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 06/ JAN 07]

Review by AudioFile.