The Shadow Riders [Mass Market Paperback]

Louis L'Amour (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1982

Dal and Mac Traven left Texas young and idealistic. They came back from opposite sides of a living hell, a war that had torn the nation in two. They wanted only to reclaim their old lives…but one man held their future hostage.

Colonel Henry T. Ashford had gathered an army of criminals and renegade soldiers, leading them on a path of destruction and kidnapping through Texas to the Gulf. Among Ashford’s captives were the Travens’ sister and Dal’s tough-minded fiancée, Kate.

Now Mac and Dal must take up arms once again and ride together against Ashford’s army—ready to fight another war, if that’s what it takes to win the freedom of the women they love.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Dal and Mac Traven fought on opposite sides of the Civil War but rode home together to start rebuilding the family ranch. Instead, they discovered the chilling aftermath of a guerrilla rampage of terror. It was said no force in Texas could stop these raiders one their bloody path to Mexico. But now the raiders had the Travens' sister and Dal's girlfriend, Kate Connery, held captive. Now they had the Travens on their trail and even though it would be just me Mac and Dal and their brother Jesse and Uncle Jack against thirty killers, the Travens would keep on coming. For as Kate Connery kept telling the other women hostages, "The Travens will never stop until we are free or they are dead."

From the Inside Flap

Dal and Mac Traven fought on opposite sides of the Civil War but rode home together to start rebuilding the family ranch. Instead, they discovered the chilling aftermath of a guerrilla rampage of terror. It was said no force in Texas could stop these raiders one their bloody path to Mexico. But now the raiders had the Travens' sister and Dal's girlfriend, Kate Connery, held captive. Now they had the Travens on their trail and even though it would be just Mac and Dal and their brother Jesse and Uncle Jack against thirty killers, the Travens would keep on coming. For as Kate Connery kept telling the other women hostages, "The Travens will never stop until we are free or they are dead."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (September 1, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553231324
• ISBN-13: 978-0553231328
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.6 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #411,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"I think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of a campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, and miner, and was an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontiers and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

The recipient of many great honor and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist to ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour publishing tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fast paced Western action, April 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Shadow Riders (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is a classic good guy vs. bad guy western action book. If you like any of Louis L'Amour's other books, you will love The Shadow Riders. This book is a great example of the qualitites that you can find in most of his books. Most of the characters show a love of family, trust, friendship, a love for nature, and dedication. I would reccomend this book to anyone that wants to read a great book filled with action and suspense.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Saddle up, November 29, 2009

By 

William B. Bebout "Acknud" (Morganfield, Ky United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Shadow Riders (Mass Market Paperback)

I don't know. I guess I liked this ok and I will probably read more of his work but it didn't flip my wig like his works do for a lot of people. It moved fast...too fast. Not much time for character development, plot fluffing, etc. There were your typical guy heroes, woman heroines, nasty villains, shoot outs, horse chases, hangings, beautiful country, yada, yada, yada! If you want a no brainer read then saddle up.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A race against time, September 22, 2009

By 

Chrijeff (Scranton, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Shadow Riders (Mass Market Paperback)

Mac Traven grew up in Texas, served in the Rangers, and even purchased the 23,000-acre ranch on which his family now lives. But when the Civil War came, his beliefs, like Sam Houston's, bade him follow the Union, while his younger brother Dal chose the Confederacy. Now it's 1865 and he's on his way home, not sure if he'll be welcome but determined to at least assure himself that his kin came through alive. Passing through a dismal robbers' nest of a town in western Arkansas, he links up with a wounded Dal, who faces a lynching by some mustered-out Union soldiers eager to get hold of his horse and gear, and they journey on together. But before long they learn that a band of disaffected and unsurrendered Rebs led by Col. Henry T. Ashford (a man with whom Dal once rode) is working its way down through east Texas, stealing cattle, horses, and young women to sell into slavery in Mexico. Among the captives is Mac and Dal's little sister Gretchen, their brother Jesse (earmarked for labor in the mines), and Kate Carlisle, with whom Dal had something of an understanding before he left for the army. Fighting men are scarce in Texas, with so many young ones killed or wounded in the War and most of the survivors still on their way home. It's up to the two Travens, assisted by their ne'er-do-well uncle Happy Jack, to catch up with Ashford's band before he can get over the border or rendezvous with a ship that will take his prisoners to Mexico. Meanwhile, the courageous and resourceful Kate is doing her best to stall the advance or get herself some help in the form of a black-sheep uncle of her own, former ship's captain (and reputed pirate) Martin Connery, who now owns a prosperous ranch below Victoria and stands aloof from all human conflicts.

This fast-moving tale follows the Travens and Kate as the renegades move steadily south, introducing the reader by the way to the terrain and history of a part of Texas that many may not have been aware of. Although I tend to question whether Southerners--no matter how degraded--would ever have gotten into the woman-stealing business, I enjoyed the book itself; L'Amour is a master of pace and his prose is highly readable and at times almost bardic. Oddly, given that the book came before the TV-movie The Shadow Riders (which I also recommend), it's dedicated to the latter's cast and crew. This would be a good title with which to begin your acquaintance with one of the most successful and widest-read Western authors of the 20th century.