‘Seventh Flag’ tells tough-as-Texas multigenerational story
Afamily of Texas empire builders forms a bond with the Muslim descendants of President Franklin Pierce’s failed Camel Corps, a U.S. Army experiment in using camels as pack animals across the Southwest.
The two lineages experience triumph and heartache over four generations, forming the basic plot of the debut novel “Seventh Flag” by Texasborn, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Sid Balman Jr. From the heights of the post-World War II boom to the desolate quagmires of modern radicalism and battle, Balman tells a unique story of friendship and loss that feels far bigger than its 238 pages.
Jack Laws is a quintessential entrepreneur who carves out a farming community in West Texas, founding Dell City in the process. Straight out of a John Wayne flick, he is rigidly moral and ready to throw down at a moment’s notice. Ali Zarkan, whose forbearers settled in America around the time of the Civil War, is a quieter man who is struggling with his ethnic identity and faith in Allah when he comes to work for Laws. After Ali saves Jack from a deadly knife fight in a Juarez bar, the two become an inseparable force whose sons and daughters will dominate football, music and life in Dell City for 80 years to come.
“Seventh Flag” is not really a novel. More accurately, it’s a set of short stories and character pieces describing the lives of the Laws/Zarkan clans. In that, it is reminiscent of Houston author J.C. Salazar’s excellent “Of Dreams and Thorns.” Both deal with strong families that struggle to adapt to changing times, though Salman tackles the dangerous waters of Islamophobia rather than anti-immigrant sentiments.
The first part of the book is a pleasant and pulpy yarn that would be almost boring if it weren’t so heartfelt and sincere. Balman keeps things moving with tales of football, revenge, love and war, but it’s not noticeably different from half a dozen other books. Once Part 2 starts after 9/11, things amp up quickly.
It’s here that Balman turns “Seventh Flag” into a must-read. As the black-and-white morality and righteousness of World War II fade from memory to be replaced by the grayness of the 21st century, the Lawses and Zarkans struggle with a world that is hard to fight simply because it has become so good at turning people into monsters. Both alt-right radical bigotry and the recruitment of disaffected American Muslims into terrorist cells are addressed in realistic and unsettling ways. Balman expertly guides readers through the paths people take to become evil, and the horrific choices that must be made to fight loved ones who have tread that path.
Granted, he creates an almost hilariously outlandish ubermensch tale of extraordinary individuals to keep the modern incarnations of the two families together in heated battle against ISIS cells in Brussels. Ademar Zarkan, one of the few significant female members of the son-dominated families, is a caricature of female toughness; she made her way as a place kicker on her brother’s and best friend’s football team before graduating West Point to become a superhumanly good sniper at their side. Her brother is also a hero who stops a mass shooting unarmed, complete with help from his faithful dog, and Deuce Laws actually fights a jeep full of ISIS fighters with football skill as if he were Flash Gordon. It’s Marvelmovie silly, but there’s no doubt that it makes the final quarter of the book a fun white-knuckle ride that has honest tension and high stakes.
The book is extremely engaging, though Balman does go on some historical tangents that don’t really do much for the story and fit rather awkwardly. That aside, “Seventh
Flag” is a classic story of good people who must figure out what that means in a world that seems to value goodness less than it did in their grandfathers’ time. To that end, it’s a soulsearching read that should make people think twice about what our conscience and families might ask of us in the end.