Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie is yet another towering achievement from James Lee Burke, whose legacy as perhaps the greatest living crime writer is only further cemented by this extraordinary novel. As a lifelong fan of Burke’s work, I’ve long believed that no one paints with words quite like he does—and this latest entry in the Holland family saga is nothing short of breathtaking.
Set at the dawn of the twentieth century, the novel introduces us to Bessie Holland—a character as unforgettable and fierce as any Burke has ever created. Through Bessie’s eyes, we see a rapidly changing America, one scarred by greed, violence, and injustice. The vast Texas countryside becomes both a majestic backdrop and a battlefield, under siege from oil companies and men haunted by their pasts. And when Bessie is forced to flee to New York after a tragic act of defense, the novel expands into an epic of survival, transformation, and the quest for meaning in a broken world.
Burke’s genius lies in his ability to blend the visceral with the mystical, the profane with the sacred. His characters are never one-dimensional: they are haunted, deeply flawed, yet animated by a profound moral compass that keeps them walking into the storm. Bessie is a luminous example—a young girl with the soul of a warrior, shaped by grief, injustice, and a longing for love she has never truly known. Her journey from rural Texas to the gritty streets of New York is both heartrending and triumphant.
As always, Burke’s prose sings. His sentences pulse with poetry and pain, each line charged with an almost biblical weight. The surreal, dreamlike elements that thread through his best work are present here too, enriching the narrative rather than distracting from it. These touches add a spiritual dimension that elevates the novel far beyond the conventions of the crime genre.
Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie is more than just a return to the Holland family—it’s a return to the timeless themes that make Burke’s work so transcendent: justice, redemption, the cost of violence, and the resilience of the human soul. This may be one of the finest novels he has ever written—and for James Lee Burke, that is saying something.
A magnificent book by an unsurpassed writer.
