It is hard to believe, but it has been 20 years since Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” won the Pulitzer Prize. With its quirky characters and bold descriptive prose, it has become the novel about the Old West by which subsequent similar novels are judged.
Even with all his sequels and prequels, McMurtry has never come close to recapturing the magic of the original.
But, with his new novel, “Tehano,” University of Tennessee in Knoxville professor Allen Wier just might be the one to finally give McMurtry a run for his money.
Epic in scope and with a cast of characters to equal that of a classic Russian novel, “Tehano” seduces you into following the separate stories of immigrants and Indians, soldiers and sodbusters, slaves and saloon owners. And, like most good novelists writing about the West, Wier uses climate and terrain to great effect.
It ranges from the eastern Civil War battles to the swampy plantations of south Louisiana, to Missouri, where wagons gathered before heading out on the great migration to the West Coast on the Oregon and Sante Fe trails.
In “Tehano,” all roads lead to that area in West Texas and Oklahoma – with a smattering of New Mexico and Colorado – known as Comancheria, or the decidedly inhospitable realm of the Comanche Indians. It is here where Wier brings all the disparate parts of his narrative together.
Wier uses the written musings of young Gideon Jones, a traveling salesman/undertaker, to tie the pieces together, but Gideon’s journey west is really only a part of the story.
Slaves Knobby Cotton and his wife, Elizabeth, head west after running away from a Louisiana plantation. Knobby is good with horses, and he has been told that he has a future in Texas.
There are the twin Speer brothers, Alexander and Charles, who fight on different sides in the Civil War and come to much different ends.
We meet Two-Talks, or Wahatewi, a warrior with the Antelope Comanches who is able through force of personality and courage to become the war leader of his tribe.
Dorsey Murphy is a coming-of-age farm girl from Indiana who finds love with Gideon on the trek across the prairie but whose life, through a twist of fate, is turned upside down.
Then there is Orton Trainer, a one-eyed, one-armed, fast-talking con man, who certainly gets something of a comeuppance.
Other characters come and go in this story that is essentially about a nascent nation spreading its wings and all the different parts that made it what it was.
Like the best historical-fiction writers, Wier has done his homework, and it shows in the minutiae, detail that only enriches and never dulls or slows the story.
The mid- to late-19th century, when most of this tale is set, was a harsh and dangerous time in the United States west of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and Wier infuses the story with information that is richly rewarding. We learn, for example, how the Comanches viewed their world, how they named their children, how they prepared their food and clothing.
We also learn such things as what you can use to prepare a body for burial when the usual potions and materials are unavailable.
We learn much about the travails of crossing the prairie by covered wagon, about how tintypes were made, and even how people dressed.
Wier even goes into detail on how Comanches treated their enemies (it wasn’t pretty).
But most of all, we learn how Americans thought in those pioneer days, how they dreamed and how they suffered.
It is also a story of man and nature. There is wind and rain, swollen rivers and dried up water holes; extremes of temperature that could fry your brains or give you frostbite.
It was a tough time, and it took tough people to survive, and Wier shows you just how it was done. And he does all this with narrative brio, while also giving us characters that seem real.
Books editor Tom Walker can be reached at 303-820-1624 or twalker@denverpost.com.
Tehano
By Allen Wier
Southern Methodist University, 736 pages, $27.50
