Brush Country: Two Texas Novels

By Elmer Kelton

To Elmer Kelton, the brush country of southwest Texas is home. Nobody knows Texas's history, people, beauty, and dangers as well as this greatest of Western writers. Barbed Wire , the first novel in this omnibus, is the story of one-time cowboy Doug Monahan, who runs a fencing crew outside the town of Twin Wells. Monahan, a likeable, hard-working Irishman, and his workers dig post-holes and string red painted barb wire for ranchers as protection against wandering stock, rustlers, and land hungry cattle barons. Their fencing operation is opposed by Captain Andrew Rinehart, a former Confederate officer and an old-school open range cowman of the huge R Cross spread. With his brutal foreman, Archer Spann--who does the violent work of chasing squatters off the range--Rinehart wages a barb wire war against Doug Monahan. A second colorful tale of the brush country is Llano River . Dundee, a onetime cowboy, one of Monahan's fencing crew in Barbed Wire , wanders into the town of Titusville, broke, tired, and itching for a fight. Town patriarch John Titus hires Dundee to find out who is rustling his cattle, but he already has a culprit in mind--Blue Roan Hardesty. Once a friend, now a sworn enemy of the powerful Titus clan, Hardesty is Titus's choice for villain--but Dundee is determined to find out the truth, even if it costs him his job.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765310198
• ISBN13: 9780765310194
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 382 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

why?

Whats to review?Anyone who reads westerns Knows that Elmer Kelton is one of the best up there with Gray and Lamore. His characters are real and not superheroes and that what makes reading his work so enjoyable. I would recommend to anyone,especially first time readers of this genre to start by reading any Kelton book because when you do you will quickly become a regular reader as I did. I believe I have read all if not most of Mr. Kelton's westerns and like this last read,somes twice.

This was a really good pair of books.

I wish I had known there were two books. I already had one of them so I was buying that one for the second time but they were both worth it I gave the one I had to my son.

If it's Kelton - Read It

Since Kelton's books were recommended to me by Wayne Barton, (another Golden Spur winner and very fine Western writer), I have become a true Keltonite. A former farm and ranch reporter for the San Angelo, Texas paper, Mr. Kelton grew up on the sere and unforgiving plains of West Texas at a time when wildcatters were still wild and the real old cowboys were still around to tell their tales. His books ring with an accuracy that other Western authors only lust after. I lived out in West Texas and today's residents are shadows of their predecessors - but you can still get a good idea of what the original Anglo and Tex-Mex settlers were like from looking at them. Or, you can read Kelton and get the real thing without visiting the Llano. Often basing his stories or real events, he creates three dimensional charachters who behave like real people with real shortcommings and emotions. They behave like people we know instead of some pre-programmed Western versions of the Terminator. Not all his books end in a titanic shwdown of blazing six-guns. But then neither did everything in real life back then. These two novels are a pair of his works that show off some of the best qualities of Kelton's writing, but when someone crafts book with as much expertise as he does, it is hard to rate any given work against the others. They are all good. By the way, I highly recommend you also read Kelton's "The Wolf and the Buffalo" a book which Wayne Barton accurately called, "a western novel for pepole who don't like western novels". The better known "The Good Old Boys" shows a playful side of Kelton's writing and is, sorry Tommy Lee, better than the otherwise excellent TV adaptation. If it's Kelton - read it.