Customer Reviews

Kiowa Trail

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Every time I read a novel by Louis L'Amour, I am reminded why he is the King of Westerns. His novels are not of the "cookie-cutter" variety and this novel is vintage L'Amour. It is a story of revenge, and the strength of one woman's resolve to avenge the death of her young brother. But it is L'Amour's skillful use of flashback sequences which defines this book. The tale is actually told from the point-of-view of a man whose parents were killed causing him to spend three years living with Apaches, as well as time in Europe and as a Union Officer in the Civil War. It is his story as much as hers and it should be obvious that this is a complicated plot. But L'Amour successfully pulls it off. L'Amour's storys are always "real" in that the locations are real places and many of the characters are historical. Few historians are as knowledgable of this era as L'Amour, and it shows in his novels. Enjoy reading Kiowa Trail!

It's difficult to give voice to characters in the Old West without making it sound almost like a parody. However, with his expertise and acumen actor Ron McLarty brings Louis L'Amour's characters to life with authenticity and vitality.

Men of the Tumbling B were tough, having survived hardship and danger during a recent cattle drive. The town they came to is described thusly:

"The town to which we had come was ten buildings long on the north side of the street, and seven long on the south, with stock corrals to the east, and a Boot Hill on the west, and in between an edging from the mills of hell.

South of the street were the shacks of the girls, and north of it the homes of the respectable businessmen of the town, where no trail driver was permitted to go."

In that last sentence lay the problem. Foreman Conn Dury had made that clear to his men - they were forbidden to go on the north side of town. However, temptation in the form of Linda McDonald, was too much for Tom Lundy, and he paid with his life.

His sister, Kate, owner of the Tumbling B well knew that the townsfolk liked the money the cowboys brought in, but disparaged the men. That was one thing; her brother's murder was quite another. She determined to get revenge for his killing, but at what price?

This is one more Western adventure as only L'Amour could write them. Enjoy!

- Gail Cooke

The main plot is revenge. The people in a small town, controled by a ruthless man, murder a young man. The young man's sister, Kate, wants revenge but not in the way the town people expect. She leases the land around the town and fences it in with barbed wire and no cattle herd is allowed through....she wants the whole town to die. The main character is Conn Dury and the story is told from his POV, in many flashbacks his story is told from his childhood and through this war with the town, Kate being the woman he loves and her brother the son he never had. This story has well crafted characters and is an epic story not fully realised, told much too simply. Though not a bad novel it's a long way from being as good as it could have been. Still, I enjoyed reading it and let my imagination fill in what I felt was missing.

Conn Dury has been living with Kate on her ranch for how long? Ten years? Fourteen years? Oh, well, a long time. And he loves her desperately. So why hasn't he married her? Because he never could find the right words? So they've mended fences together and branded cattle and fought Indians, just like a married couple, but he can't find the right words? Come on! Besides this flaw in the plot, there are a host of others. There are too many different villains, too many flashbacks, too many fast forwards, and too many digressions. I knew that Conn and Kate would beat the bad guys in the end, but by the time they finally wrapped it up, my only reaction was "Whatever!"

Kiowa Trail is a quick read, but it resonates with a genuine sound of the Old West that only L'Amour can offer. The plot is somewhat generic (a group of rough-around-the-edges cowboys clash with peace-loving townfolk and a fight ensues), but what makes this one stand out from the pack is the fascinating back-story of Conn Dury and his voice as narrator. L'Amour was so immersed in the culture of the West, lines like, "Two men had fallen before Comanche rifles, but the Comanches sang their death songs in the light of a hollow moon, and the Kiowas mourned in their lodges for warriors who fell before the guns of the Tumbling B," roll so naturally off his tongue you get the sense that you are audience to the real thing - a true cowboy from the Old West. If you enjoy Louis L'Amour, this is one of his best. If you have never rode a trail with L'Amour, this is a great place to start.

Kate Lundy has driven her cattle herd from Texas up the Kiowa Trail to a Kansas cowtown. With her have come her hard-bitten foreman Conn Dury, and her brother, Tom Lundy. When young Tom ventures north of the street to see his sweetheart, where no cowboy is permitted to go, he unwittingly ignites all-out war between Kate's ranch hands and the townsfolk.

Early in his career, Louis L'Amour wrote a short story called "End of the Drive." Although it had some of L'Amour's most beautiful and poetic language, its characters were lifeless, its plot limp, and it had no interesting female characters. The story was deservedly unpublished at the time. In 1964, L'Amour dusted off the story, reworked it, expanded it into a novel, and published it as Kiowa Trail, which may well be the best novel L'Amour ever wrote. Comparing the short story with the novel is a powerful testament to how good a critic of his own work L'Amour was, and how well he could rectify the original story's weaknesses while enhancing its strengths.

L'Amour obviously recognized the lack of female character power in "End of the Drive" and attacked the problem head on. Kate Lundy is one of the most memorable heroines in pre-feminist Western literature. She rides a wagon right along with her cowboys, and when Indians attack she shoots back with her buffalo gun. But what makes her a distinctly feminine character is the trait she shares with thousands of frontier women who helped tame the West without ever firing a gun: unshakeable endurance. Absolutely nothing can make Kate Lundy quit - not even the combined guns of an entire town.

The novel is essentially two stories in one: Kate Lundy's battle with the townsmen mixed with Conn Dury's autobiography. This is an extremely difficult trick to pull off - most attempts end up with one story feeling like a distraction from the central tale - but L'Amour balances the two narratives flawlessly.

The most remarkable thing about Kiowa Trail is how it simultaneously adopts and subverts the conventions of Western stories. The conflict between city folk and country folk is central to hundreds of Western novels. Conventionally, cities are shown as solvents of moral values, corrupting their citizens into a degenerate, libertine, relativistic lot, while rural dwellers' traditional values are shown as superior: more honest, virile and hard-working. L'Amour's tale is also of conflict between city dwellers and rural people, and again the rural people embodied in the cowboys are the heroes. But at the same time, he turns the convention on its head. Here the city represents traditional morality: sexually repressed, rigidly divided by class and wealth, denying individuals' liberty to direct their own lives, choose their friends and lovers, or even to (literally!) cross the street. Kate Lundy and her cowboys hold to a newer, younger creed of personal liberty, freedom to better themselves, and refusal to respect class distinctions.

L'Amour also inverts ordinary sexual conventions: Kate Lundy, the sexually experienced widow, is the heroine, while the virginal, "pure" Linda McDonald is an icy-hearted villain. L'Amour would only go so far with this assault on convention: even Kate won't go "all the way" with Conn until they're married. But in an age before birth control Kate's behavior is common sense, not just religious or cultural prejudice.

Here, clearly, in the midst of the 1960s' battles between young and old, is L'Amour's effort to ensure the survival of the Western novel. L'Amour meant to show the youth of that turbulent decade that they, too, shared values with the cowboys and had something to learn from their frontier forebears. All this, in the context of the rollicking action and excitement of a traditional Western story. Few Western authors since L'Amour have had the same skill or vision.

I read this book after reading the review of others. I have to say this book will not go into my library of books to keep. I really expected alot better from this author, since his books continue to sell despite his death.

The book had little action, and did not excite me. I found the confrontation at the end to be the most exciting part of the book! Really thought it could of used more action throughout.
Most of the book was building its way to the final 4 chapters, guess what I am trying to say was that I was really just plain disappointed by this author.