Cowboys & Outlaws: 6 Books to Read Your Way Across the American West
Did you know that before John Wayne starred in 1969’s True Grit, it was a wildly popular book first? In fact, many of the most well-known Western movies and TV shows were novels first. Here’s just a short list of the most memorable fictional cowboys and outlaws of the 20th century.
Lonesome Dove
Heritage Auctions, HA.com; CBS/courtesy Everett Collection
Old friends Augustus McCrae and Woodrow F. Call, along with a ragtag group of ranch hands, leave the Rio Grande Valley on a cattle drive to Montana, encountering outlaws, Native Americans and old flames along the way in this 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Larry McMurtry that spawned an equally successful TV series in 1989. McMurtry is perhaps the most well-regarded author of the genre; he also penned several other follow-up novels in the 1990s, all of which ended up onscreen as well: Streets of Laredo, Dead Man’s Walk and Comanche Moon. And, departing from the Western sphere, he also wrote the novel version of the Oscar-winning film Terms of Endearment, about a mother and daughter who must face various challenges together. McMurtry is clearly a talented storyteller, and his novels are a great place to start if you’re looking to spend time in the fictional Wild West.
True Grit
Heritage Auctions, HA.com; Everett Collection
This epic tale of revenge was first published as a serial within the Saturday Evening Post by Charles Portis, then published as a stand-alone book in 1968. An older woman named Mattie Ross recalls when, as a young teen, she traveled across the country with a U.S. marshal named Rooster Cogburn and a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf to find the man who killed her father. The book — which would later be adapted into a film twice, starring John Wayne and Kim Darby in 1969 and starring Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld in 2010 — is considered one of the best American novels of all time.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Heritage Auctions, HA.com; Everett Collection
This slightly absurdist and thoughtful 1976 novel by the slightly absurd storyteller Tom Robbins flips the genre on its head by featuring a female protagonist and a more modern setting. Sissy, a hitchhiker who was born with gigantic thumbs, embarks on a bizarre odyssey from Virginia to Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where she encounters a wild cowgirl named Bonanza Jellybean and the all-female Rubber Rose Ranch. Throughout the journey, Robbins waxes poetic and offers wonderful, timeless insight into the intricacies of the human psyche and human nature itself. It’s a great read for the cowboy that leans toward the philosophical. The book was also turned into a 1993 film with an all-star cast, including a pre-Pulp Fiction Uma Thurman as the lead, but this is a text that does not easily translate to the screen, and unsurprisingly, it didn’t do that well. (All of Tom Robbins’ books are truly bizarre, but totally worth the read!)
Shane
Heritage Auctions, HA.com; Everett Collection
This 1949 novel by Jack Schaefer, which was later adapted into a 1953 film starring Alan Ladd (and a 1966 ABC series starring David Carradine), originally ran in the Argosy magazine in three parts. Set in 1889 Wyoming, it follows a family forever changed by the titular stranger with a mysterious past who shows up at their farm and stays there as a farmhand, eventually helping them fight for their home when a powerful rancher tries to drive them out.
The Shootist
Amazon; Everett Collection
Before it would star John Wayne in his last film appearance, The Shootist was a 1975 novel by Glendon Swarthout. The story follows an aging gunslinger named John Bernard Books, who rides into El Paso in 1901 to see a doctor with some bad news — forcing him to face the greatest enemy of all: his own mortality. Ending in an epic gunfight, it has everything you could want from a Western, plus some existential musing.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Heritage Auctions, HA.com; Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
This 1983 historical novel by Ron Hansen, which would later become a film starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, follows the life and death of one of the most infamous real American outlaws of the Wild West: Jesse James. Based on extensive research and word-of-mouth accounts of the real-life exploits of James and his gang of bank robbers, the book takes readers for a ride through the 19th century American West as this Robin Hood-like gang robs banks, trains and stagecoaches across the country and gains national fame for it. Until, following increasing pressure from law enforcement seeking to capture them, one of James’ admirers, fellow criminal Ford, kills him in exchange for a reward. It’s one of those cases where truth is perhaps stranger than fiction, and Hansen does a great job of bringing the story to life.
Cowboy Christmas
November/December 2024
Saddle up for some Holiday Cowboy fun with movies, music and your fav Christmas episodes of classic Westerns.
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