Cold Heart, Just Rewards

Clifford Jackman’s remarkably assured historical novel, The Winter Family (Doubleday, $25.95), recounts the exploits of a gang of former union soldiers turned outlaws in the years following the Civil War. Led by the charismatic, golden-eyed Augustus Winter, whose devotion to violence approaches the mystical, the “Winter Family” flees from certain court martial at the end of the war and heads west. The family quickly builds a reputation for savagery, from busting heads during a vicious Chic