An all-out women-driven, queer, transgender, multiracial takeover of the Old West suits the prevailing winds, and that’s exactly what Melissa Lenhardt delivers in her unapologetically badass western, Heresy. ... disguised as a true story, rescued from the dustbin of history and presented to the reader as a collection of diaries, letters, newspaper clippings and W.P.A. oral histories...This storytelling device can be too clever for its own good, but Lenhardt manages to pull it off...Still, if Lenhardt ever writes another one of these, I hope she’ll dispense with the fancy tricks and just give us a good tale.
While the grit and fortitude of these women never come into question, the validity of their background often does. Was it really necessary for each and every one of them to have a traumatic, scarring past? These women may be tough, but it seemed excessive for all of their backgrounds to be inexplicably awful ... This story is written at a gallop, with so many plots overlapping, that the reader will be fully engaged ... a Wild West epic, with heroes that have largely been written out of history. For readers that want to see minorities, of both the west and today, represented with personality, I recommend this book to you.
The overall plot is fast paced, despite the format: the story is told through diary entries, newspaper clippings, and WPA slave-narrative interviews, which adds some distance between the reader and characters, and the story is bookended with the viewpoint of a modern historian who discovers Garet’s diary. Readers who relish an unusual narrative structure will enjoy this unique take on the traditional western.
