The best novels about the old west with in-depth characters

Perhaps Arizona’s most widely recognized event, the thirty seconds of gunfight at O.K. Corral in Tombstone isn’t the main emphasis in Epitaph. That belongs to Russell’s engrossing depictions of the intensely personal relationships between the Earp brothers, their girlfriends and wives, their routines, and addictions.

As I found out in researching for my novel, if you get the accurate facts about the personalities and actions of the good and the bad people, who actually lived in the Old West, you’re well on the way to writing a novel.  

John Philip Clum started the newspaper in Tombstone and called it Epitaph, because “No tombstone is complete without its epitaph.” To complete your reading about the Old West, include Epitaph.

Bass Reeves, a real individual, was a slave in Texas and, as personal attendant and crack shot, accompanied his owner, an officer in the 11th Texas Cavalry Regiment, into battle during the Civil War.

The lyrical and colorful narrative closely resembles Bass Reeves’s speech and thoughts, so that one flows into the other. That’s fine writing. Thompson reveals in meticulous detail behavioral traditions between owner and slave and between the slaves themselves that reflect the injustice rife at that time.

This is the first novel in a trilogy, and I’m eagerly awaiting the next two books.

Novelists eternally search for or try to develop a unique story idea that could only occur at one point in time, place, and circumstance. Swarthout succeeded. And it’s a gem. 

Set in the 1850s, The Homesman takes place on the barren flats of prairie land with winds that swirl constantly, sending women to the ends of their sanity. Berserk with loneliness, hardships of life, personal losses of children, these women are transported across Nebraska in boarded-up wagons, fitted out with restraints, to insane asylums in the east. 

One lone woman takes charge of a wagon. A man, looking to purchase that woman’s ranch, reluctantly goes along. Soon the journey turns in his favor. The Homesman is a gripping, stark tale from a true literary writer of the Western genre.

The West used to begin in Ohio. Some of my ancestors moved there around 1816. Their experiences must have been very similar to those of the Lucketts family depicted in The Trees by the masterful writer, Conrad Richter.

The trees so closely grown and tall, one could not see through them or over them. They had to be toppled. Children got lost in the trees while playing; some never made it back to their homes. Lost forever.

The rich narrative, reminiscent of pioneers’ old diaries the novelist read prior to writing, fills the reader’s ear with character, honesty, pathos, and heart. Richter won the Pulitzer Prize for The Town, the third novel in his Heartland Trilogy. But the trilogy’s first book, The Trees, is my favorite.

To my experience, this was the first novel of alternative historical fiction.

What if General George Armstrong Custer had survived the Battle of Little Bighorn? I loved the idea that history could be turned on its ear. The most fascinating parts of the book are the court appearances of Major Reno and Captain Benteen, who both survived the Little Bighorn.

Author Jones used their actual testimonies from Reno’s 1879 trial in Chicago. Having been to the battlefield, I understood better how the fight turned against Custer after reading this book. It’s well worth the read.