Dead Man's Walk (Lonesome Dove, 1)

by Larry McMurtry

Book Overview

The first of Larry McCurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove tetralogy, showcasing McCurtry's talent for breathing new life into the vanished American West through two of the most memorable... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671001167
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 1.1" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

OK, but just barely. Has some major errors with historical facts.

I thought the book was readable and held my attention, but at times the main characters were so inept, I doubt if they could have survived such a situation. As for historical references, I have no problem with bringing actual historical figures or events into a work of fiction and using a bit of poetic license to enhance the story. However, I feel bringing in a character who is fairly well known in Texas history and having him killed more than 50 years before his actual death is a bit much. Largely because of this, even though I have already purchased Comanche Moon, i have put it on the back shelf and may, or may not get to reading it in the future. As a general rule, if i rate a book as just OK (3*), it means I wish I had read something else instead. I'm pretty sure there are many other good books out there I haven't read yet that I could be spending my time on.

Top-notch McMurtry

Written after LONESOME DOVE but actually a prequel to it, this is about Gus and Call when they were young men and members of the Texas Rangers. They are quickly disillusioned by the incompetent leadership of Col. Caleb Cobb; they also come up against some pretty rough Comanches and tough Mexican soldiers. Worst of all, they have to walk across the Jornado del Muerto, an immense desert region, which they just barely survive. It contains all the things that made LONESOME DOVE great, except for the variety of outlandish characters that peopled that novel. If you like McMurtry's writing style, his fascination with the grotesque, his depiction of people as just blundering along at times, his lack of shyness in describing violent events - and all of it swathed in a Twainian understated humor - you should enjoy this book very much. Not as good as LONESOME DOVE (nothing is), but a major achievement for McMurtry.

McMurtry does not dissapoint!

This is the first written story of Gus and Call and it is one of the best McMurtry has written. There were parts of this book that had me rolling in laughter (especially when Gus gets drunk early in the book). The action is great and doesn't let up and it let's us get to know Call and Gus when they were young and dumb and full of....well, you know the saying. In fact, for about a quarter of all of Gus's dialouge he is talking about whores. It really is refreshing to read the story of Gus and Call when they were young and don't know ANYTHING about tracking, shooting, women, and many other things. In Lonesome Dove these two are older men who have seen it all and done it all. In Dead Man's Walk, we get to read about the beggining of it all. I am not a big western fan. In fact, Lonesome Dove was the first western I ever read. Imagine my suprise when I cried at twice reading that book and still to this day consider it in my top ten. While this book is no Lonesome Dove, it does not dissapoint and I am confident you will agree.

Grim Prarie Tale

This book in the Lonsesome Dove series in the first, in chronological order. Gus and Call, called 'young pups' by their elders, have joined the Texas Rangers, hoping for some adventure (and for Gus, a little brothel action and card playing). Soon after their expedition begins, they discover they are in way over their heads. The Commanches are, literally, on the warpath, and hate white people (with good reason, considering the way the white men treated them). They are also very smart, very fast, very skilled in riding and fighting, and VERY bloodthirsty. The main Chief, who even the most hardened soldiers are scared of, is Buffalo Hump, and he is introduced in an unforgettable lightning storm on the prarie, in one of the most vivid, terrifying scenes in the entire series (and if you've read the series, you know things can get VERY ugly). The men in charge of the expedition are either crazy, stupid, drunk, have a very short fuse, or all of the above. The trek starts out rather confident, looking forward to the challenges to come, but soon realize they are no match for the Indians. The Commanches set up a variety of clever, deadly, devastating traps, and soon their ranks are halved, then quartered, then...then it gets REALLY ugly.This book was a page-turner, and had all the entertaining characters a reader comes to expect from the series. All of the books treat death as an everyday thing, but I think this is one of the most cold-blooded; do not read if you're sqeamish. There's not just one or two nasty scenes, either, they count many and come fast. This is an entertaining book, one that I couldn't put down, but not especially pleasant. A good read, don't get me wrong, but one that is emotionally gruelling.I guess if you wanted to read the books in chronological order, this would be the one to start. I had planned to do that originally, after I read LD, but have found reading them in the order they were written is actually more satisfying; backstory is filled in, and you get a better perspective.If you loved LD, read this and the other books in the series. If you're just starting out, read LD first; it may be the strongest, but it will give you an idea of just what a treat you're in for. No ccomplaints here-I put the bok down after reading the last page, and promptly walked right over to my new copy of Commanche Moon (I wisely bought them at the same time) and started in.This author was born to write.

yes sir....the legend continues

another great addition to the Lonesome Dove saga...tell the story before Lonesome Dove. A must read for the Lonesome Dove fan. A quick read compared to the first two

A Most Intriguing "Western"

Shattering many of the old stereotypes recalling the "glory" of the Old West, McMurtry has actually created many new stereotypes of his own. Here, in this new tale, are the grotesques we have come to expect of him, the suddenly violent eruptions, the sense of utter despair. And yet the tale resonates, with its feeling of hopelessness, with all the aimless wandering and low-down betrayals and the angry, incomprehensible bloodiness of the Indians who understand the land better than the whites and yet are doomed to lose it to the ever swelling numbers of them as they trek west to encroach on the Indian lands. Neither side understands the other and so are brought together in nothing less than a bloody war of attrition. The harshness of the terrain in which they all travel imposes its bloody, dehumanizing regimen on these people. This tale is, finally, one of pointless wandering by men who seem to have nothing better to do. And, indeed, perhaps they haven't. Even more, it is a tale of the savage interplay between the peoples of this land as Indians brutalize whites and Texans brutalize Mexicans who, in turn, brutalize the Texans, each yielding to the baser impulses which the land elicits from them. There is not much plot here either, just the love of adventure of two young frontier boys on the way to becoming men which draws them into one foolhardy campaign after another, leading them to participate in, and witness, some of the meanest conditions living can offer, and some of the ugliest means of dying. It doesn't quite make men of them, to be sure, but it hardens them and teaches a bit about living in the harsh world in which they find themselves -- a world which, through good luck and some basically sound personal traits, they manage to survive in long enough to embrace. I am reluctant to invoke LONESOME DOVE here, the tale which started all this but, in fact, that is the obvious reason for this book, to show us how the two old Texas Rangers, Call and MacCrae, got to be the way we found them in the latter book. And yet it all works here without reference to that first book. This one reverberates with a real feeling of life, despite its lack of any real plot and the utter sense of despair which permeates the tale. And it holds you. It's not so much that you want to know what happens (I already largely did, having seen the TV movie previously), but that you want to be there with them, to experience the world which McMurtry so brilliantly conjurs up for Call and MacCrae. Sometimes it's not a matter of trying to guess what's around the next bend only but wanting to live it. And that's what McMurtry gives us here. And that's good writing. SWM author of The King of Vinland's Saga