Hombre: A Novel

I’ve always liked the movie Hombre starring Paul Newman and decided to read this novel, which it the movie was based on. Elmore Leonard is a great storyteller and exceptional writer. He tells the story through the eyes of a young man who works for the stage line. Your first glimpse of Hombre is when he rides into town with two of his Apache friends. The description of Hombre is a mysterious, silent man that you don’t mess with. He paints a picture of a man set apart, with a aura around him different from his Apache friends and different from all the cowboys in town, including the outlaws. It’s a tale about a person caught between two worlds. He was raised as an Apache, and later by his Uncle. He lives in both worlds, yet he respects and lives by what he learned from the Apaches.When Hombre is told he needs to ride the stage through the desert to Bisbee, Arizona to collect what has been left to him by his uncle, he ends up on a stagecoach with people who shun his Apache background and beliefs. Unbeknownst to the passengers, the stage line has been set up to be robbed by one of the passengers and his cohorts. When they get robbed and left to die in the desert, Hombre is the only one who knows how to survive and suddenly they are dependent on him. At the same time, Hombre and the other passengers now become hunted by the robbers and Hombre must use his Apache skills to outwit and fight the robbers.It’s a great story. Filled with a lot of wonderful descriptions of why the Apache were so perfectly adapted to warfare in the American Southwest, and how they perfectly understood how to survive in a land non-native people couldn’t comprehend.

Elmore Leonard is not nearly as well known for his Westerns as his hardboiled crime dramas, but in fact he is one of the finest writers in the genre of the past fifty years. This is partly because he is simply one of the finest American writers period. He is famous for writing some of the hardest hitting, purest prose during his lifetime. There is nothing flashy about his writing. My guess is that a glossary of all his words would tally less than 400 words in all. There probably aren't more than 20 words of more than two syllables in the entire book. Some paragraphs have few two syllable words. This apparent simplicity can mask what is in fact a stunning virtuosity. Leonard is known as a writers' writer and this will escape no reader who pays close attention to the deceptive sophistication of his style.The story he tells here is a simple one. Leonard is hardly the first to depict a Western hero. Nor is he the first to depict a hero who possessed outsider status. John Russell, the "hombre" of the title (and "hombre" here really has a similar sense as "Mensch" in Yiddish), is a white man who was raised in his formative years as an Apache. He is the result of white, Apache, and Mexican cultures, yet doesn't completely fit in any of them, though he seems most comfortable as an Apache. Though treated with disdain by his fellow stage coach passengers (actually, they travel in a mud wagon), he becomes their only hope after bandits hold them up. Russell is striking for being treated as both heroic and extremely capable, but not impossibly skilled as many Western heroes are depicted. Though a good shot, he misses more than he hits his target. Though most of his decisions are good ones, he isn't infallible.The novel is remarkable for how sympathetic Native Americans are depicted. Written in 1961, Leonard anticipates the far more positive treatment of Indian characters in the seventies and beyond. The central crime in the novel is one perpetuated against Indians, just as the protagonist is a product of Apache culture.I highly recommend this novel. It is yet another example of Elmore Leonard's consummate ability as a writer, as well as being a first rate Western. It truly is Leonard at his very best.

What I love about this book beyond the story which is fast-paced and gets nasty is that the POV is from an unreliable narrator who is trying to relay his memories about something he got caught up in and he is trying his best to remember everything he can. It is very similar to those guys who interacted with Jesse James or Billy the Kid and years later try their best to relate their unvarnished take on what they observed. I re-read this recently because I'm an Elmore Leonard fan and it's fun to get a fresh take on something you like. I don't like rehashing the plot of a book. It's cool that Elmore was trying out something a little different here. I think his experiment yielded a book that's memorable. This one is easily one of his best, check it out!

I saw the movie with Paul Newman before reading the book . My favorite western :)Different characters than the film but still a good read !

It’s historical fiction that’s concise and exciting. Hombre was so well-written that when they made the movie, they didn’t change a thing. When in the history of Hollywood did that ever happen?

If you haven't seen the 1966 movie take on Elmore 'Dutch' Leonard's book, HOMBRE then track it down and watch it. It is a western classic or perhaps a unique western, starring the late Paul Newman in a very good version of the book. Saying that, read the book first because Leonard offers up a great story that is anything but a typical cowboy western. The premise is that raised among the Apaches John Russell has to readjust to 'civilized' life and finds out early on just uncivilized it can be. Next to Valdez Is Coming and 3:10 to Yuma Leonard's Hombre makes us all look at the Old West with new eyes and perhaps a new appreciation of a talented writer early in his long career. Although he went on to write modern best selling novels I'd sure like to see him go back and do another western. They may not have broad appeal since the public seems to look down on the genre (literally too, for that matter since one store where I buy my books has them situated at ankle level!) and probably don't sell as well as main stream works but many are better written and have stronger, more convincing storylines than most thrillers. If you haven't read Leonard's westerns then try this book out for size and settle into a new realm of appreciation for a better brand of storytelling.

I seem to have been chatting a lot lately about the virtues of Westerns - they are, after all, just a sub-genre of historical fiction - and realised I'd never actually read Elmore Leonard's novel <i>Hombre</i>. Magnificent. Adapted for the screen, of course, starring Paul Newman and, like Jack Schaefer's <i>Shane</i>, so beautifully written that the scriptwriters had virtually nothing to do. They simply lifted the dialogue straight from the book's pages. Great story and a neat change from my normal reading.

The first Elmore Leonard novel I've ever read, probably not the last as I've enjoyed not only watching Paul Newman's charismatic portrayal of John Russell, a white man brought up by Apache Indians in this story but that of Burt Lancaster as Valdez in the title role, on my to read soon list. It's easy, too easy to run the film over in one's mind as the book is read but the author's stories seem tailor-made for the medium of film so I wasn't disappointed by the story even though the movie had added at least two significant characters to the tale.Thoroughly readable and gripping from beginning to end. I have the feeling that Mr Leonard doesn't do too many happy endings though.......

A white man raised by Apaches is snubbed by the other stagecoach passengers, until they are held up by outlaws. And then... I’m reading Leonard’s whole oeuvre in order and have been looking forward to this one (1961), which was made into the classic Western, starring the late, lamented Paul Newman. Brilliant stuff, gripping, five stars, but then, curses! I couldn’t believe it. Just before the nail-biting, final showdown (the outcome of which I’d forgotten), seven pages from the end, Leonard tells us what is going to happen. Gah! I almost threw the book across the room. The first of his ten rules of writing is don’t start with the weather. One of my ten would be don’t give the game away!

Elmore Leonard writes with sparse, lean prose evoking the desert landscape and the tough people who pass through it. I can appreciate why so many of Leonard's stories have been turned into films - strong, deceptively simple storylines and great dialogue; the it's a short jump from novel to screenplay. I found it impossible to read the book without seeing the Paul Newman film of Hombre at the same time. This wasn't a problem, rather a tribute to quality of the film adaptation.The tale is narrated by a young observer, who channels the predjudices of the rest of the characters in their reactions to the man they call John Russell. At the end of the book we know quite a lot about the man and his history, yet it is the deep enigma of his personality that stays with you at the end and is what makes Hombre so much more than a simple tale of the Old west.

Hombre tells the story of a bickering stagecoach party who get ambushed in the desert. Brooding John Russell leads the survivors into the wilderness before a final showdown with the bandits and their leader Frank Braden that doesn’t disappoint. On the surface this is a classic western plot but in the hands of Elmore Leonard there is an infusion of twists, turns and double crosses mixed with strong complex characters and a stripped down narrative which elevates this novel to another level. To summarise this is another outstanding western novel from the late master crime author Elmore Leonard that surely deserves more recognition.