If Joe Lansdale's name wasn't at the very top of this novel, recommending it in a quote, we'd know soon enough just how much his influence is all over the book like a rash. It's not just that it's set in Texas, in a period setting no less, but that it's a tall tale that just might be true, put down onto its pages by a born storyteller. He may not be as smooth as Lansdale yet, but the potential is obvious.

That said, the beginning is a little awkward, because we naturally assume that the prologue, set in the dim and distant year of 1932, is in the past, but it isn't to the characters who we'll soon meet. It counts as their dim and distant future, when we flash back to their present in what we're bizarrely not initially told is 1900. That may well be because we're in Galveston, Texas and that year carries a serious weight to it for that town. Then again, once we realise that we're in the past, we can't fail to realise that we're in the vicinity of the famous Galveston Flood, the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.

We start right before it, in time and place, as Josh Rountree introduces us to most of the principal cast of characters, then he backtracks a couple of weeks to tell us why we should care and gradually adds in the other people we need to watch. Chief among them is Floyd Betts, who starts the novel in Galveston but promptly leaves because he's received a telegram from his Aunt Constance. She's letting him know that his dad has died and she needs him to come to Old Cypress to pay the funeral expenses. She's mean and has no intention of paying to put her brother in the ground.

Floyd isn't surprised by any of this and takes care of business, so quickly and efficiently, given how laid back everyone is, that we have to wonder if it's remotely important. And it isn't, of course. The important thing to the story at hand is that Floyd finds himself in Old Cypress and there, parked in the church like lost lambs, are a couple of kids unwanted by anyone in the town. They're Nellie and Hank Abernathy, freshly orphaned after their home burned down under mysterious circumstances, and now in need of serious help.

Just in case the subtext didn't come through there, I ought to translate. Nellie and Hank's mother was a wise woman who healed the folk of Old Cypress far more efficiently than Mr. O'Casey, whose general store includes a selection of snake oil in its stock. And so he presumably goads them into a quick march on the witch's house with torches and pitchforks and burns the building to the ground. With the Abernathy family still inside it. And so Floyd finds himself with a pair of unexpected extra bodies on board as he sets off back to Galveston.

If you're wondering why the book is called 'The Legend of Charlie Fish', let me add that the journey back from Old Cypress takes far more pages than the journey there and part of that is to increase the party yet again. Now, we've already met Charlie, courtesy of a grand reveal before we jumped a couple of weeks backwards, so we know that he's basically the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He is a bona fide gillman, fished out of an east Texas creek by Kentucky Jim, all-purpose assistant to a travelling conman, one Professor Finn of Professor Finn's Healing Spirits, Waters and Mystical Tinctures.

Nellie, who has inherited her mother's second sight—mum called it "seeing inside" but she prefers "whisper talk"—, can hear Charlie's despair from a distance in a vaguely telepathic fashion, so she guides Floyd in and they mount a successful rescue attempt, making a couple of powerful enemies in the process. Nellie calls them "scoundrels", which feels as applicable a term as any, and it sticks. Off they all chase to Galveston with the scoundrels inevitably close on their tail and a large storm brewing that will change everything for everyone.

This isn't a long book, likely a novella rather than a novel, but it does a surprising amount with its page count. The central theme is family and, in particular, what makes one. Floyd didn't have much to do with his alcoholic father and skinflint aunt, but they're kin and he does his duty with regards to the former. Nellie and Hank have lost their family but found someone willing to step in because it needs to be done. Charlie Fish has lost his family too, by foolishly swimming away from them, but finds his protectors as well.

The one important character I haven't mentioned yet, Mrs. Elder, who runs a bed and breakfast in Galveston, accepts them all because Floyd does, but has her own story to tell too with regards to a dark family history. Between the five of them, only two are related, but they combine into what we learn is a powerful family nonetheless, much stronger than any of those forged by blood. If family means belonging, then that's the primary reason Charlie Fish is here, because he's as different as anyone can be in Texas in 1900. That he's accepted, too, speaks volumes about so many other people who generally weren't. He's an avatar for everyone else clearly not the Texan norm.

Now, if we're going to jump the shark in the very title by introducing a gillman, then why not take it all a little further into the supernatural by adding witches, albeit benign and helpful ones rather than cackling hags in black hats? If we're going to accept Charlie Fish, given what he is, then we're surely not going to baulk at Nellie and her whisper talk. "Magic always works," her mum told her, "just not always the way you expect it to," and that has meaning as the story wraps up.

The lesson is that these characters are all merely people and a simple act of acceptance by Floyd in regards to each of them hammers that message home to us, grounding them as the storm builds in power and we realise that whatever petty differences we might have in our world are not going to anything when faced with the majesty of Mother Nature. She doesn't care either. We're all equal in her eye. And that eye, hiding inside a growing hurricane, is very much on its way to wreak havoc on the town of Galveston. More than six thousand Texans wouldn't see the next morning.

Once I realised the timeframe, after that awkward opening, this flowed for me. Rountree keeps a small cast but grows each of them, ironically Charlie Fish perhaps least of all, and it's easy to care about them, especially with those scoundrels probably just round the bend waiting to pounce. We actively root for them, because we know they're going to be up against it with the storm, and they just can't lose to a pair of scoundrels before they get a shot at surviving that, surely? I liked where Rountree took them and I can't argue with his difficult choices. The setting is pristine too.

He's written a lot of short stories, but this looks like his first work at a more substantial length. I'd pick up the next one in a heartbeat. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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