Hondo

Hondo by Louis L’Amour is a Historical, Western Romance set in the 1800’s in the desert region of the Colorado Rockies. Like so many of L’Amour’s books it was made into a movie in 1953 starring John Wayne filmed in Utah. I was moved to download and read this Bantam Book after finding about twenty of his novels on display at the Travel Bureau in Mancos just east of the author’s ranch in Hesperus. If I’d known I’d forgotten that these novels generally contain a love interest.

L’Amour vividly evokes the desert landscape through which I’ve been driving for the past few weeks. He is also familiar with horses, their anatomy, their health issues, and their quirks. He understands desert survival skills, tracking, hunting, fishing, and living off the land. He has also researched Ute, Apache, and Anasazi oral traditions, lifestyles, and warfare. His attention to detail rings true and gives a sense of authenticity to his writing. Calling it great literature may be a stretch but it makes an easy read and evokes a sense of pioneer life and at nearly 100 books one has much to enjoy.

As Hondo has been employed by the military fun is made of West Point graduates sent out to command platoons in Indian Country. Little has changed over the centuries as Sebastian Junger makes similar comments about West Point Lieutenants in Afghanistan. If you’ve seen the movie you know that there much is made of the bond that develops between the 6-year-old son of the abandoned ranch wife and the gruff despatch rider who happens upon their isolated valley; in the book this relationship is only implied and much more attention is paid to life at the fort and on patrol for the cavalrymen who attempt to put down an Indian uprising.