I love a Western.
Maybe it’s because my dad had old movies playing on the TV throughout my childhood, or maybe it’s because I grew up in rural California, where it was easy to imagine cowboys and campfires.
Nowadays, I gravitate toward what I would call “modern literary Westerns,” with their strong sense of place and complex look at the issues and ethics in how this side of America was built. Plus, they’re usually good yarns.
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What follows are novels, but I’ll add a non-fiction recommendation, too: One of the themes in these books concerns aging lawmen, soldiers or Texas Rangers who lament the things they’ve done for pay or progress. A non-fiction companion that gave me some perspective, especially for stories set in Texas, is “Empire of the Summer Moon” by S.C. Gwynne, a biography of the Comanches as they interacted with those men who sought their destruction.
So if it’s been a while, here’s a small sample to get you started on your next adventure.
“Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry
No list of Westerns should begin without “Lonesome Dove,” the greatest of them all. At its heart, it’s a story about how people, places and perspectives change over time – for better and for worse. Decades after winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, it’s still incredibly readable, full of quirky characters, adventures, humor and so much empathy.
“In the Distance” by Hernan Diaz
A Western unlike anything else I’ve read. An immigrant boy gets separated from his brother on the voyage to America and ends up in California instead of New York. Alone and isolated by both culture and language, he journeys east against the flow of prospectors, naturalists, homesteaders and religious zealots. The writing is beautiful, heartbreaking and puts a fresh spin on the origin lore of the West through the eyes of an innocent outsider.
“Butcher’s Crossing” by John Williams
An Ivy League college grad heads west to learn about something he can’t learn in books, and heads out on a buffalo hunt. This is as much eco-fiction as it is a Western, with gorgeous descriptions of nature and a brutal, inevitable reckoning.
SEE ALSO: How the American West story reveals the nation’s triumphs and tragedies
“True Grit” by Charles Portis
A master class in voice, told from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl set on avenging the death of her father. You’ve probably seen a movie version, maybe the one starring John Wayne, but the book is somehow visceral and charming at the same time and is worth a read.
“Hombre” by Elmore Leonard
Written about seven years before “True Grit,” this one also deals with the moral ambiguity of delivering justice. It’s told as an eye-witness narrative about a stagecoach ride gone wrong, in which the passengers of questionable character and common sense become dependent on the titular gunsman they snubbed to save them.
“News of the World” by Paulette Jiles
An aging Army captain finds himself alone after the end of the Civil War and takes up traveling through Texas, reading newspapers aloud to the townspeople. At one stop, he’s conscripted to return a kidnapped girl to her relatives through a perilous and emotional journey. There is a lot of empathy in this short novel, with themes of found family and questions about what we consider “civilized.”
Further reading suggestions: “Deadwood” by Pete Dexter, “The Plague of Doves” by Louise Erdrich, “Wounded” by Percival Everett, “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones, “Lone Women” by Victor LaValle, “Outlawed” by Anna North, “Inland” by Téa Obreht, and “How Much of These Hills Is Gold” by C Pam Zhang.