Excerpt from El Paso by Winston Groom, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mick, who had finally taken off his cap, nodded stupidly, like a bird drinking water.

"Marvelous!" Shaughnessy thundered. "Well, now, when you get old enough, and get out of school, you come and see me, all right? there are jobs for good men on the NE&P."

"I want to be an engineer," Mick said. "An engineer! Grand. My word, grand! We have lots of engineers running our trains," said Shaughnessy.

"No, a real engineer. To build buildings," Mick said.

that revelation shocked Arthur. He wasn't even sure what an engineer was.

"Well, well—a boy with ambition!" said Shaughnessy. "that's what I like to see. Now, you come and see me anyway, boy, when you're finished with school. I have plenty of those kinds of engineers working for me, too." Arthur and Mick looked at each other almost furtively; all this simply seemed too good to be true.

Christmas dinner was a feast of a kind that Mick and Arthur had only imagined. Cold sliced roasts and poached salmon and soups, hot and cold, and then a fat suckling pig with an apple in its mouth glistening in the gaslights. Neither Arthur nor Mick understood all the various utensils beside their plates. Mick picked up a salad fork and speared an oyster. All day Alexa had tried to ignore them but now could not resist becoming their mentor as Mick lifted an oyster to his mouth.

"No, that's not it—it's the one to your front," Alexa rebuked him, holding up her oyster fork. With the oyster already to his lips, Mick stopped dead in his motion, put the oyster back on his plate, scraped it off the fork, and let it sit there. Beatie shot a hostile glare at her daughter, who looked back, appearing self-satisfied and smug.

When the servants cleared away the next set of china and brought in bowls of steaming artichokes, the boys had no idea what to do with the strange vegetable. Alexa drew the boys' attention by plucking off an artichoke leaf and putting it in her mouth, pretending to eat the entire thing. the boys followed suit.

As Shaughnessy wound up a story about elk hunting in Alaska, Beatie looked over to her new charge and his friend. Both had stuffed whole leaves of artichokes in their mouths and were chewing, almost red-faced, their cheeks bulging desperately, while Alexa sat with a beatific smirk on her face.

"Oh, I'm sorry, boys!" Beatie cried. "Let me show you how this is done." She demonstrated the method of artichoke-eating to the boys, who stopped chewing and were watching her intently. Mick finally put his hand to his mouth and removed the huge wad of the 'choke.

"No!" Alexa cried exuberantly. "Same way in, same way out. Use your spoon."

"I didn't put it in with a spoon," Mick said sullenly. "I put in with my fingers, like you showed us."

Beatie immediately got up from her chair. "All right, Alexa!" she said sternly, storming toward her daughter. Beatie's footsteps pounded around the edges of the rug. Knowing what was about to happen, Alexa clouded up as if she were going to cry. "Go to your room. I warned you!" Beatie seized Alexa by the arm and was towing her, whimpering, out of the dining room.

"Now, Mother," Shaughnessy declared after things had gotten quiet again. "I suppose someone's got to administer a little discipline in this household."

the boys looked at each other. Mick smiled bravely.

"She ought to come eat where we do," he said. "they don't even give us a knife."

At this, Shaughnessy roared, "Yes, my word, yes! Maybe she should at thatfi Here," he said, "I will carve up the pig myself. I take pride on being the finest pig-cutter west of the Hebrides! Do you boys like pig?"

At these reassuring words the feeling of embarrassment that had overcome the boys suddenly blew away as flakes of ash from a hearth. Arthur looked at Mick, who was grinning, studying the pig. It was one thing he had no doubt he knew how to eat.

Excerpted from El Paso by Winston Groom. Copyright © 2016 by Winston Groom. With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.