LIFE, NOT DEATH, DROVE JUBAL YOUNG . . . but memories of his ma and pa, and his beautiful, bright sister are all he has left. Memories of the peaceful days before Jubal stumbled home with his .22, his blood running cold with fear, terror, and anger. When it was over, the homestead was half burned to the ground. Someone had to bury the bodies. Someone had to set things right. Now, as Jubal rides west into New Mexico, he remembers his family’s laughter and love, his pa’s wisdom, ma’s thick books, and everything that was defiled by a band of drunken renegades towed along by one man’s murderous grudge. A reprobate lawman won’t believe his story. A soft-hearted mountain man won’t survive Jubal’s one-man war. And a judge and his beautiful daughter cannot stop Jubal from climbing a peak of blood and madness: for justice, or payback, or something he can live for—or die for—redeeming. An American film icon delivers a great American novel with Payback at Morning Peak. Gene Hackman, whose fiction is “rousing” (Publishers Weekly) and “robust” (Winston-Salem Journal), takes readers on a powerful and historically dead-on western odyssey in the tradition of Louis L’Amour.

名優ジーン・ハックマンが描く本作は、単なる西部劇の枠を超え、喪失と再生の狭間で揺れる人間の魂を冷徹かつ叙情的に描き出しています。主人公ジュバルが背負うのは、復讐という名の業火だけでなく、かつて愛した家族の温かな記憶です。ハックマンは、暴力の連鎖がもたらす虚無感と歴史の重みを緻密な描写で捉え、読者を荒野の深淵へと強烈に誘います。 古典的な力強さと、名優ならではの鋭い人間洞察が融合した筆致は圧巻です。正義と狂気が表裏一体となった旅路の果てに、読者は真の贖罪とは何かという重厚な問いを突きつけられるでしょう。血と硝煙の匂い立つ文体の中に、失われた愛への渇望を探求する、文学的野心に満ちたエネルギッシュな傑作です。