"The Son" by Philipp Meyer

A damn good novel about four generations of a Texas family. Meyer details Comanche customs as well or better than "Empire of the Summer Moon"; his portrayal of the Mexican-American 'war" in South Texas in the early 1900's, and the Texas oil barons is as good as any history I have read while placing the context in a page turning novel. Highly recommended. Note: Skip the AMC series. It is another story altogether. It's not worth the time.

Even if God existed, to say he loved the human race was preposterous. It was just as likely the opposite; it was just as likely he was systematically deceiving us. To think that an all-powerful being would make a world for anyone but himself, that he might spend all his time looking out for the interests of lesser creatures, it went against all common sense. The strong took from the weak, only the weak believed otherwise, and if God was out there, he was just as the Greeks and Romans had suspected: a trickster, an older brother who spent all his time inventing ways to punish you. Meyer (2013). p. 505

The cotton men had burned their own buildings to bring us into the war and before the sun came up the next day, their newspapers were blaming escaped slaves and Yankees, whose next step would be to burn all of Texas, right after they got done raping all the white women. Meyer (2013). p. 439