Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove Story, Book 2)

5 starsCaptain Inish Scull, also known as Old Nails is the leader of the troop of twelve Texas Rangers who set out to capture or kill, Buffalo Hump, Kicking Wolf and Gomez. Buffalo is a great Comanche chief who is a ruthless killer, Kicking Wolf is a Comanche horse and child thief extraordinaire and the other is a very vicious killer from Mexico.The group of twelve men set out with Captain Scull and his great horse that the Indians call “Buffalo Horse” because he is so imposing.At the same time, Buffalo Hump is having trouble with his son by a woman named Rosa that he stole from Mexico. Blue Duck is an arrogant twenty-year old who thinks his father is a fool, but wants his acclaim in spite of it. He is impulsive, does not learn the bow and prefers guns. Buffalo Hump is an extraordinary shot with his bow and thinks that his son is foolish for preferring the gun.Gus and Call are now middle aged men and are still Texas Rangers. They are still hunting Comanches and ride with Captain Scull. Also along for the ride is Pea Eye Parker and Deets. Captain Scull is a very educated man and has a wife who wanders and makes no secret of it. Inez now has her eye on young Jake Spoon. Gus is still in love with Clara Forsythe and still wants to marry her and after twenty years of asking, she still refuses him. Call, on the other hand, visits Maggie Tilton, but has no intention of marrying her in spite of the fact that she wants to marry him.Hector, the Buffalo Horse, is stolen by Kicking Wolf. Captain Scull sets out on his own with the scout Famous Shoes, a Kickapoo tracker, to track the great horse. He is afoot. He makes Gus and Call captains and tells them to take the other men back to Austin. On their way, Call finds a dead young boy. They follow the Indians’ tracks and shoot all four of them, rescuing the mother and her two surviving children. The woman is mute and seemingly does not want to have anything to do with her children. She keeps running off.They reach Austin and now promoted as Captains, they must report to the Governor. They are ordered by Inez to go and find the Captain and the Governor reluctantly agrees. The men set out the day after.Captain Scull gets captured by Ahumado, the killer to whom Kicking Wolf took his horse. Hung in a cage over two hundred feet from the bottom of the canyon, Scull amuses himself by capturing birds to eat and scratching Greek letters on the side of the cliff.Meanwhile, back in Austin, Buffalo Hump has raised a great army and set out to kill whites. When he gets to Austin, many people are killed. Pearl, Long Bill’s wife is “outraged” by seven Comanches. Long Bill is saddened and unsure what to do. Maggie is pregnant by Call, but he won’t marry her or acknowledge the child. Gus is despondent because Clara has decided to marry Bob Allen, a horse trader from Nebraska. Fortunately, she left with Bob before the raid, but her parents were killed.Ride with Captain Scull, Captains Gus and Call, Famous Shoes, Deets, Long Bill, Pea Eye and the rest of the boys as they scour the prairies looking for Comanches and other ne’er-do-wells. The infamous battles with Buffalo Hump, Kicking Wolf and the murderous Blue Duck are the stuff of legends. Feel the harsh weather, the inhospitable countryside and the fights they get into while doing battle. The relationships between the men are very interesting – and the women as well. The men’s loves and losses figure large in this book. All in all, it was a rousing read and I’m very glad to have read it – for the third time. It is a story I will never tire of.

I saw a Lonesome Dove movie on TV. I hadn't known Lonesome Dove was a book that transitioned into a movie. I didn't know that the fecund original Lonesome Dove bred more books and more movies. I didn't know Mr. McMurty was a writing machine who lives in his primitive, miniscule hometown in Texas, whence he churns out Lonesome Dove sequelae. The way I discovered the McMurty books was that I saw the first Lonesome Dove movie and liked the characters, both major and minor. I don't usually read cowboy literature. The nearest I have come to the genre is Homer's Iliad. But when I pulled up the Lonesome Dove hydra and saw how there was not only a master book and movie but also trailing offspring in imitation of Greek tragedy's detailing serial agons of the likes of King Oedipus, I decided to investigate. I read the thousand-page original Lonesome Dove and said bravo to McMurty's fecund production of memorable characters. I found a picture of Le McMurty and discovered he was courtesy homely just as one expects a Texas boy to be. I suspect moving back to his hometown and establishing a book store comes not from sentiment but from marketing savvy. It was hard to pick one McMurty character as favorite because all Mr. McMurty's characters are riviting as are Shekespeare's, although Shakespeare's reputation is safe. Once McMurty introduces one of his literary children in a few paragraphs, I fall in love with the rascal and agonize about his chancy life in the Texas desert reaches and small-town knots of human pathology that Mr. McMurty spawns. Gus so far is my favorite. Mr. McMurty allows Gus to be smart and witty. Call sounds like he inhabits the lowere quartile of the Standford Binet. I have seen some more of the movies and watch with nervous fascination what happens to the McMurty progeny. I have not lost urgency to read the McMurty ouvre and even though I know that the author's output will never end as long as McMurty can hunch over a typewriter in the Texas literary badlands east of my home state of Florida. AS long as life continues for him, the crafty storyteller will peck out another footnote to the metastasizing Lonesome Dove saga. McMurty is a solid commentater on the Texas small town and the big range that evelops it; but Shakespeare's reputations and those of all the other luminaries of the western literary tribe are safe. I currently give McMurty's offspring a day and give my other reading matter such as presently Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric a day.The earth's seasons will come and go, the universe will continue to elude Einstein's relativity formula, the black holes will come and go talking of Michaelangelo. Mr. McMurty will live out his allotted days in his Texas hometown neck deep in the characters whom he has spawned; he will be glutted with the praise of newspaper scribes whose education consists of a couple of semesters of sociology studies in some forlorn state univeristy. This heroic scribe will die and be buried with hypertrophied salutes of our think literary culture. He will kie in the family commuity cemetery's plot close to his parents and next to his Aunt Minnie. Mr. McMurty will take his place in the transient literary Baedecker of moderately talented writers who have trod our nation's hills and dales; then he will pass from memory except for the desperate research of those marginal graduate students trying to dig up a thesis topic about which to bloviate for two hundred pages to satisfy the requirement of some forlorn university in the rolling landscape of the cities of the plains that Le McMurty catalogues in the last part of the twentieth and first part of the twenty-first century in the badlands the western continent of Planet Earth.

This is, chronologically, the second in the Lonesome Dove series. Call and McRae are now experienced rangers, spending their time defending settlers, fighting native Americans, and carrying out any other tasks found for them. Like Dead Man's Walk - the first in the series - this book is episodic in form; there are three sections, each separated by a few years. In the first, they have a charismatic leader, Inish Scull, around whom, myths grow. When his famous horse is stolen, he sets off on foot to recover it. In later sections, the rangers continue their work whilst the Civil War rages to the north.Throughout the book, the central characters' stories are interwoven with various tales, some short, some more complex. We follow the development of Call and McRae, and come to understand their motivations, strengths and flaws. For those readers, like me, who read Lonesome Dove before the prequels, the author has done an extraordinary job in filling in their back stories to produce the men we meet in that novel. There is also, over the two prequels, a sympathetic portrayal of the native Americans realisation that their way of life cannot survive.In general, the book has all the strengths of Lonesome Dove and Dead Man's Walk; a light touch, sparse dialogue, a real feel for the time and place, and believable characters. There is, I think, more cruelty in this book than the others, but the world in which it is set was a cruel, brutish one, and it does contribute to the development of the main characters' weariness. It leads beautifully into the next book.

McMurty is most know for Lonesdove, and quite fairly it is a stunning novel. However the Lonesome Dove Series is incredible, and this novel gives us more from the key protagonists in Lonesome Dove, and feel as though the reader is the third rider, riding alongside them through their adventures, heartbreak and decisions. He has an ability to right with a sensitive touch despite the sometimes rough nature of some aspects of the book. The characters are not perfect individuals but it is very hard to not to feel as though you would be or would want to be friends with them.

Larry McMurtry is a wonderful writer- capturing not just the flavour of the West but with a talent for fleshing out even the most minor of his characters. I love the way he uses humour in sometimes unexpected ways. I came to his books through the 'Lonesome Dove' mini series with Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae and Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow Call. They were obviously the perfect casting choices because e reading the books chronologically starting with 'Dead Man's Walk' their characters leap off the page fully formed.I am still reading this book- having caught the other prequel TV series [ including this one] I know what happens in the main but that doesn't spoil the book in any way. We have three men caught in uncomfortable romantic situations - Gus having lost his enduring love Clara- moved away & married- Call spending time with a pregnant Maggie but unwilling to commit not because of her profession but because he doesn't want to give up rangering & settle down and Long Bill returning to town after an Indian raid to find his adored wife 'spoiled' because of rape.Read the books in order and give yourself a real treat- wonderful writing- great stories!

Just thought the book was long-winded. Some of the plot lines were highly unlikely and I became bored with Gus and Call. Some of the other characters were unbelievable.

Comanche moon.riviting from beginning to the end, sad at times ,funny at times, but Larry McMurtry makes you feel that you are there , you can almost feel the cold ,the heat and taste the dust through the pages of the book, an author like no other , thank you Larry McMurtry .