Redeye: A Western was published by Algonquin Books in 1995. The novel is Edgerton’s departure from his usual North Carolina territory — a comic Western set in the 1890s frontier, populated by the stock characters of the genre (the drifter, the dance hall girl, the prospector, the sheriff) but rendered with Edgerton’s ear for human absurdity.
The plot involves a performing bear named Redeye, whose owner has died, leaving the animal in the care of a succession of characters who are themselves performing — pretending to be braver, richer, more competent, or more dangerous than they actually are. The frontier, in Edgerton’s telling, is not a place of mythic violence but a landscape of improvisation, where everyone is making it up as they go and the distinction between genuine identity and performed identity is impossible to maintain.
The novel’s humor is broader than Edgerton’s Southern fiction — the gags are more physical, the characters more caricatured — but the underlying theme is consistent: the gap between who people are and who they pretend to be is Edgerton’s perennial subject, whether the setting is a Baptist church in North Carolina or a saloon in the Arizona Territory.
Collecting Redeye
First edition (Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, 1995): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $10–$25
- Very good/very good: $5–$12