Books › Dead Man's Walk
Dead Man's Walk
First published 1995 · 647 pages
A brutal, darkly comic, and dust-choked journey into the unforgiving heart of the early American frontier.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like embarking on a doomed expedition across a beautiful but merciless landscape. The atmosphere is sun-baked and perilous, steeped in a gritty realism that strips away the romanticized veneer of the Old West. It moves at a steady, relentless pace, mirroring the grueling march of its young protagonists as they face arbitrary violence and the sheer absurdity of frontier ambition. The prose is plainspoken yet deeply evocative, carrying a wry, unsentimental tone that finds dark humor even in the bleakest moments of survival. It is a sobering, immersive experience that will captivate readers who appreciate character-driven historical fiction, offering a visceral exploration of lost innocence and the enduring bonds forged in the crucible of a savage, untamed wilderness.
- Mood
- sun-baked
- bleak
- perilous
- expansive
- Tone
- wry
- unsentimental
- matter-of-fact
- gritty
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- loss of innocence · brutality of the frontier · absurdity of ambition · bonds of survival
- The writing
- Plainspoken and unadorned, laced with a dry, dark humor that underscores the harsh realities of the landscape.
- The arc
- Begins with the naive thrill of reckless adventure and descends into a grueling, sobering crucible of survival and profound loss.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave unsentimental, character-driven Westerns that strip away romantic myths to reveal the blood and dust beneath.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- torture
- animal cruelty
- historical racism
About the book
Here at last is the eagerly awaited story of the early days of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, the heroes of Larry McMurtry's novel, Lonesome Dove.
In Streets of Laredo, McMurtry brought the story ahead, giving us Call in his old age; now, in Dead Man's Walk, he takes the reader back, to the days when Gus and Call - two of the most beloved figures in American fiction - were young Texas Rangers, first experiencing the wild frontier that will form their characters. We also meet Clara Forsythe, the spirited, unforgettable young woman whose effect on Gus McCrae is immediate and unshakable.
In Dead Man's Walk, Gus and Call are not yet twenty, young men coming of age in the days when Texas was still an independent republic.
Enlisting as Texas Rangers under the command of Caleb Cobb, a capricious land pirate who wants to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans, Gus and Call experience their first great adventure in the barren, empty landscape of the great plains, in which arbitrary violence is the rule - whether from nature, or from the Indians whose territory they must cross in order to reach New Mexico.
The untamed frontier, and the reckless men who live there - the Indians defending it with unrelenting savagery, the Texans attempting to seize and "civilize" it, and the Mexicans threatened by both - are at the heart of Larry McMurtry's extraordinary new novel: at once a riveting adventure story and a powerful work of literature.
Description from Open Library.
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