Specifically, when someone recognizes Grace, what is their relationship to her? I did wish for a little more detail in these scenes, though. I liked that it gave Grace and Flor a reason to team up and showed them as active rather than passive. The spying plot worked and fit into the small amount of space allotted. What made her start robbing stagecoaches? How did she get the pet hawk? How does she know Luis? I get it she’s a more close-lipped character, but Luis could have dropped a few tidbits about the two of them, and I get the vibe from Grace that she might be the type to be able to lure information out of people with her charm. I enjoyed Flor but wanted a little more backstory on her. Flor discusses other women like Grace performing on stage out west. Luis says Grace isn’t the only larger woman he’s designed for. There are also multiple times when the existence of other trans people are established. (Larger than Flor, close in size to the men in the stagecoach). This absolutely does not happen with Grace. I had been concerned that Grace’s visible depiction might fall into the cringer category of visibly “man in a dress” like in the old movies when male characters dress as women to escape something. The book does an artful job of establishing that Grace is trans without ever using the word or deadnaming her.
This doesn’t leave a ton of room for additional BIPOC in the story, but the tailor is Luis who is Black and completely supportive of Grace. It’s mostly the other folks on the stagecoach with Grace (all deliciously hateable), the tailor who helps them get ready for the Confederate gala, and the Confederate gala attendees. Since this is a short book, there aren’t a ton of characters. Grace convinces Flor to let her help in a plot to spy on some Confederate documents. She kidnaps a white damsel (Grace) who turns out to be a young trans woman on the run both to avoid her family’s wish for her to serve in the Confederate army and to seek out performing on the stage. The book starts with a stagecoach robbery by Flor (a Latina woman) and her pet hawk. In this read you get all the fun of a Western but it’s peopled with both BIPOC and queer people. This is a graphic novel for readers who love Westerns but are tired of them erasing BIPOC and queer people. But when the two get to talking about Flor’s plan to crash a Confederate gala and steal some crucial documents, Grace convinces Flor to let her join the heist. When Flor-also known as the notorious Ghost Hawk-robs the stagecoach that Grace has used to escape her Georgia home, the first thing on her mind is ransom. In this rollicking queer western adventure, acclaimed cartoonist Melanie Gillman (Stonewall Award Honor Book As the Crow Flies) puts readers in the saddle alongside Flor and Grace, a Latina outlaw and a trans runaway, as they team up to thwart a Confederate plot in the New Mexico Territory.
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