An Action-Packed Collaborative Novel

Noah’s Ride: A Collaborative Novel

By Elmer Kelton, Judy Alter, Carlton Stowers, Phyllis Allen, James Reasoner, Mary Rogers, Mike Cochran, Mike Blackman, Mary Dittoe Kelly, Jane Roberts Wood, James Ward Lee, Carole Nelson Douglas and Jeff Guinn

(Texas Christian University Press, $19.95, paperback)

Turn 13 authors loose on one novel and what do you get? In the case of Noah’s Ride, you get an action-packed Western adventure full of twists, turns, tension, love, brutality and cattle. The story also is rich with mean characters trying to catch the book’s hero, a runaway slave, who has ended up in Texas and tried to hide behind the name Freeman on a ranch named “Free Land.” Each of the authors has created a chapter, and some of the fun is watching how the prose flows from Elmer Kelton to Judy Alter to Carlton Stowers and so on, as each writer suddenly steps into the story and takes it in new directions, while trying to hang onto the established tone. One writer, Mary Dittoe Kelly, previously was unpublished until she entered a contest and won the opportunity to write Chapter 8 of Noah’s Ride.