If John Wayne were still alive, he’d be salivating. For Phillipp Meyer’s second raid on the American heart is the story of Texas, where strength, men, dust, violence, gunpowder, cattle and oil come together to shine in a blood-soaked cowboy state.

Meyer’s first novel, American Rust, took place in a dilapidated small town. In stark contrast The Son is a broad sweeping epic that traverses multiple generations, with enough horror and violence to rival Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. But this is not simply a tale of war and incoherent brutality; it’s about what it is to be American.

The McCulloughs are a powerful Texan dynasty, and each chapter is narrated by a different family member, decades apart. Their patriarch is one of the most formidable men in Texas, known as The Colonel. He was kidnapped by Comanche Indians as a boy, and reared on the plains of war and battle cries. Eli is renamed Tiehteti by the Indians, and eventually lives to be 100 years old. His years spent with the Comanche are narrated until the 1870s, where the story shifts into the hands of his son Peter. Told through journal entries from 1915-17, Peter is haunted by the murder of a neighbouring Mexican family. The third voice is Jeannie, the Colonel’s great-granddaughter, who wanders through her memories from the floor of the family mansion after suffering a fall in 2012.

You can almost feel your own scalp being ripped off by the complexity of such a long-sweeping narrative, but Meyer kindly includes a genealogy for us to return to. After all, it’s family he is concerned with, and the vast differences between siblings and the choices (or lack of) available to them. Meyer dissects this idea through Texas – the classic American son – where ‘the strong must be encouraged, and the weak allowed to perish’.

Luke May is a freelance reviewer.