Books That Shaped "Blood Touching Blood"

A list of the book that helped create my literary western

Feb 06, 2025

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*Blood Touching Blood* by Derrick G. Jeter, Y’allogyPress, 2024.

Books are made out of books. –Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy said, “the ugly fact is books are made out of books. . . . The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.”* This is certainly true in the writing of Blood Touching Blood. The books that helped shape my literary western were wide-ranging. For those who like to get a behind the scenes look at how Blood Touching Blood came about these books were integral to the process. I’ve included brief annotations of how each contributed to the crafting of the narrative.

Bedford, Hilroy G. Texas Indian Troubles: The Most Thrilling Events in the History of Texas. Dallas: Hargreaves Printing Company, 1905.

Bedford was valuable in providing authentic dialogue, as well as descriptions of scalping. The basic idea of the boy and his decapitated mother came from Bedford’s work, as did much of Doctor Andersen’s pleas with Colonel Pendleton.

Chamberlain, Kathleen P. Victorio: Apache Warrior and Chief. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.

Chamberlin’s work furnished necessary information on the central protagonist of Blood Touching Blood—the Apache Chief Victorio. As a historical figure, he is overshadowed by such notables as Cochise and Geronimo, but was, in fact, a more cunning strategist and fiercer foe than his more famous contemporaries.

Chamberlain, Samuel E. My Confession. Reprint. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956.

My Confession is the private memoir and sketches of a United States dragoon who fought in the Mexican-American War, only to desert and join the notorious Glanton Gang, which was contracted by Mexican authorities to hunt, kill, and scalp every Apache they could lay hands on. Chamberlain’s first-hand account as a scalp-hunter was critical in understanding the cruelty and inhumanity in taking another human being’s scalp and displaying it as a trophy—or in Glanton Gang’s case, selling it for cash.

Cozzens, Peter. The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.

This general history of the Indians Wars of the nineteenth century provided a useful overview of the battles Victorio engaged in with the United States cavalry and how clever a war chief he actually was.

Francell, Lawrence John. Fort Davis. Images of America. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2011.

Though I’ve been to historic Fort Davis many times, Francell’s small volume supplied essential details about it’s location and layout along the San Antonio-El Paso Road. The pictures and drawings offered a visual narrative of what life was like for women and children living in a frontier fort in far West Texas. Many of the details in the first two chapters of Blood Touching Blood, including the description of the buildings, the surrounding mountains, and the camel corps, are derived from this volume.

Gillett, James B. Six Years with the Texas Rangers: 1875–1881. Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones Company, 1921.

Gillett’s work provided key information on Victorio as the “Apache Napoleon,” his sister Lozen, and the two cavalry scouts Bernardo and Simon. (They were in reality Pueblos. I changed them to Texas native Tonkawas). Gillett also supplied the seedbed for the stories of Sergeant Taylor’s death in Cãnon de Caballo, Lieutenant Dancy’s arrogance and the disaster at Boulder Canyon, the pinning of the skulls of dead Buffalo Soldiers at Santa Elena Canyon with picket pikes, and the death of Jesus Cota. Details of using old moccasins to deaden horse hooves and deceive scouts looking for shod tracks, discovering gallons of abandoned mescal, finding mired cattle with hunks cut from their sides, and arrowshot horses also come from Gillett.

Homer. The Iliad. Emily Wilson, trans. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2023.

The Greek language leaps from the page under the pen of Emily Wilson’s translation. Homer’s (and Wilson’s translation) descriptions of violence and death are evocative and affecting, the style of which is employed through the Blood Touching Blood.

Hutton, Paul Andrew. The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History. New York: Crown, 2016.

Hutton, a distinguished scholar of the American West, particularly of the nineteenth century, offered a wonderful account of the larger Apache Wars that raged in the American Southwest. Though Geronimo and other famous Apaches occupy much of the narrative, Hutton’s treatment of Victorio—of his character, his family, his relations to other Apache chiefs, his reasons for jumping the reservation, and his death—were invaluable in constructing a realistic picture of the man in Blood Touching Blood.

Langellier, John P. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2016.

Not only did Langellier’s work provide a helpful overview of Black troopers in the United States cavalry, it included interesting and valuable photographs of Buffalo Soldiers—of their uniforms, how they wore their hats, how they carried themselves, and of their dignity.

Lanning, Jim and Judy Lanning. Texas Cowboys: Memories of the Early Days. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1984.

The actual death of Britton “Britt” Johnson and his crew of teamsters took place on January 24, 1871, four miles east of Salt Creek in Young County. I transported the story to the wilds of far West Texas. Though his care for his white horse, as well as the horse’s name (Sweet Cheeks), is fictionalized, the horse’s death is recounted as is in this work.

Leckie, William H. The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West. Revised (Shirley A. Leckie). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

Leckie’s work is a classic history of the Buffalo Soldiers who served during the Apache Wars. This became a crucial resource in understanding soldiering from the Black troopers perspective. With a focus on Victorio’s movements in Texas it also proved to be an important asset in setting the novel’s narrative within a specific time and place.

McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West. New York: Random House, 1985. McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

I’m particularly indebted to Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry. Both men published their magnum opuses in the same year—one to critical acclaim and the other to virtual obscurity. These men were the finest storytellers and sentence stylists of their generation, influencing the language in Blood Touching Blood.

O’Neal, Bill. Frontier Forts of Texas. Images of America. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2018.

This small volume furnished a good overview of forts on the Texas frontier. The images illustrated how primitive some of these outpost really were, like (the non-Texas) Fort Ruby mentioned in the novel.

Robinson, Sherry. I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013.

Victorio wasn’t a Lipan Apache. He was a member of the Warm Springs Apaches, sometimes called Chihennes (as they’re often referred to in Blood Touch Blood), which was a band of the larger and better known Chiricahua Apaches. Nevertheless, Robinson’s work supplied background information on Victorio, his motives for going to war, and his relations with the more Texcentric Apaches, the Lipans—some of whom rode with Victorio and some of whom scouted for the United States cavalry against him.

Shakespeare, William. The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, in William Shakespeare: Completed Works, 2nd ed. New York: The Modern Library, 2022.

“Artistic ugliness. Beautiful violence.” That’s how I opened a review of Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian. After reading McCarthy, I had thought no piece of literature could be as grotesque and exquisite in equal measure within the covers of one book. That is, until I read Shakespeare’s first tragedy, Titus Andronicus. Not only did depictions of violence in this play inform the depictions of violence in Blood Touching Blood, more importantly Shakespeare’s depiction of what happens to the soul of Titus Andronicus informed my own depiction of Ethan Pendleton’s soul in my novel.

Sowell, Andrew Jackson. Rangers and Pioneers of Texas. San Antonio: Shepard Brothers & Company, 1884.

As indicated in “A Note on the Story” in Blood Touching Blood there would be no novel without Sowell’s story of Colonel Albert C. Pelton and a Spanish girl by the name of Bella. Not only did the basic storyline come form Sowell, so did various other vignettes that constitutes the novel’s narrative, including the episode of the rattlesnake infested patch of prickly pear and descriptions of how to scalp a fallen foe.

Watt, Robert N. “I Will Not Surrender the Hair of a Horse’s Tail”: The Victorio Campaign 1879 and “Horses Worn to Mere Shadows”: The Victorio Campaign 1880. Solihull, West Midlands, UK: Helion & Company Limited, 2017and 2019 respectively.

Though I moved many of the battles between Victorio and his Chihennes and the United States cavalry from Arizona and New Mexico to Texas, I could not have recreated the details of Apache or U.S. strategy or battle lines without these invaluable volumes. Certain names of the dead and wounded are taken from these works. Events along the Devil’s Racetrack, Tinaja de las Palmas, Rattlesnake Springs, the death of General J. J. Byrne in Quitman Canyon (The Apache Post Office), the death of Jesus Cota, and the episode of mired cattle with hunks of meat cut from their side were all inspired from the historical accounts recorded in these books. Lieutenant Caleb Dancy’s description of the battle of Tres Castillos and the controversy surrounding Victorio’s death are drawn from Watt, as well as Colonel Pendleton’s final words about Victorio. Of all the sources I used, these book, written by an Englishman who went to extraordinary lengths to visit each battle site and poured over primary documents, proved to be the most important in filling out Sowell’s narrative outline. I’m greatly indebted to Mr. Watt and his yeomen work in producing these magnificent volumes.

* This is not just true for novels, it’s also true for plays, histories, and biographies.

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