You ever finish a book and feel like you need to go sit in a dark room for an hour? That’s basically the Larry McMurtry experience. But specifically, it’s the Comanche Moon Larry McMurtry experience.
Most people come to this world through Lonesome Dove. They fall in love with the bickering, the sunsets, and the tragic heroism of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call. Then they find out there’s a prequel. They think they’re getting more of that cozy-but-sad campfire energy.
They aren't.
Comanche Moon is a different beast entirely. It’s meaner. It’s bloodier. It’s a book about the "middle years"—that messy, violent gap between being a kid and being an icon. If Lonesome Dove is about the end of an era, Comanche Moon is about the grinding gears of history that crushed everyone involved before that end even arrived.
The Bridge Between Legends and Ghosts
Chronologically, this is the second book in the series, but McMurtry wrote it last. That matters. By the time he got to Comanche Moon in 1997, he was done with the "myth" of the West. He was deconstructing it with a sledgehammer.
We find Gus and Woodrow in their 30s. They aren’t the retired legends of the Hat Creek Cattle Company yet. They are captains in the Texas Rangers, but they’re serving under a guy named Inish Scull. Scull is an eccentric, brilliant, and arguably insane Yankee aristocrat. He’s the kind of guy who picks his teeth with a horseshoe nail and rides a horse named Hector that everyone wants to steal.
The plot kicks off when a Comanche horse thief named Kicking Wolf actually does steal Hector. Scull goes on a solo mission to get his horse back, leaving Gus and Call in charge. What follows isn't a simple "hero saves the day" story. It’s a sprawling, picaresque nightmare that takes us from the bordellos of Austin to the torture pits of Mexico.
Why the Characters Hit Different
In Lonesome Dove, Gus is the philosopher. In Comanche Moon, he’s still talkative, but he’s desperate. He’s obsessed with Clara Forsythe, and watching his heart break in slow motion as she decides to marry a horse trader named Bob Allen is brutal. You see the light start to go out of him.
Then there’s Woodrow Call.
Honestly, Call is hard to like here. We see his relationship with Maggie Tilton, the mother of his son, Newt. We see him refuse to acknowledge the boy. We see his rigidity not as a virtue, but as a wall that keeps him from being a person. McMurtry doesn't give him a pass. He shows us that Call’s legendary "duty" is often just a mask for his inability to handle human emotion.
The Real Villains (and Why They Aren't Just "Bad Guys")
McMurtry does something fascinating with the antagonists. He gives us Buffalo Hump and Blue Duck.
Buffalo Hump is the old-school Comanche war chief. He’s the sunset of his people. He’s terrifying, but he has a code. He’s a man watching his world disappear. On the other hand, his son Blue Duck is just pure, nihilistic chaos. He’s a monster. The contrast between the father’s "honor" and the son’s "madness" is one of the best things McMurtry ever wrote.
And then there’s Ahumado. The "Black Vaquero."
Ahumado is the stuff of nightmares. He’s a Mexican bandit king who keeps prisoners in cages hanging off cliffs or in pits filled with snakes. Some critics think he’s a bit over the top—sort of a cartoon villain in a realistic book—but he serves a purpose. He represents the sheer, senseless cruelty of the frontier.
The History Behind the Fiction
Is it real? Sort of.
McMurtry was the king of "inspired by." He didn't write history textbooks; he wrote "vibes" supported by facts.
- The Characters: Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae are loosely based on Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving.
- The Events: The Great Raid on Austin in the book is a fictionalized version of the real Great Raid of 1840.
- The Tragedy: The death of characters like Joshua Deets or the capture of white women (based on the real-life Cynthia Ann Parker) mirrors the actual, messy history of the Texas-Comanche wars.
The Comanches in the book are depicted as the most formidable light cavalry in the world, which they were. They weren't just "Indians" in the way Hollywood used to show them. They were an empire. McMurtry respects that power while showing the horrific violence it produced.
The Miniseries: Does It Work?
In 2008, they turned it into a miniseries. Steve Zahn played Gus, and Karl Urban played Call.
It’s tough. You’re following Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. That’s like trying to play basketball in Michael Jordan’s shoes. Zahn and Urban actually do a great job, though. They don't just do impressions; they show us younger versions of those souls.
Val Kilmer also shows up as Inish Scull. He’s... well, he’s Val Kilmer. He’s weird, he’s intense, and he’s probably the most polarizing part of the show. But the miniseries, like the book, is much goreier than the original Lonesome Dove. It doesn't shy away from the scalping, the torture, or the dirt.
Why You Should Care in 2026
We live in an era of "gritty reboots." Everything is dark now. But Comanche Moon isn't dark for the sake of being "edgy." It’s dark because it’s trying to be honest.
It shows us that the West wasn't won by "good guys" in white hats. It was won by tired, flawed men who were better at killing than they were at living. It’s a book about the cost of building a civilization.
If you want the full experience, don't just watch the show. Read the book. McMurtry’s prose is deceptive. It’s easy to read—it flows like a conversation—but it punches you in the gut when you aren't looking.
What to do next
If you're jumping into the Comanche Moon Larry McMurtry world for the first time, here is the move.
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First, ignore the publication order for a second. If you’ve already read Lonesome Dove, go back and read Dead Man's Walk first. It’s the "origin story" where Gus and Call are basically teenagers. It makes the weight of Comanche Moon feel much heavier.
Second, check out Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. It’s non-fiction, but it reads like a thriller and covers the real history of the Comanches that McMurtry was riffing on. It’ll give you a whole new perspective on characters like Buffalo Hump.
Finally, brace yourself. These books don't have happy endings. They have "realistic" endings. And in the world of the 19th-century Texas frontier, that’s usually a lot more interesting anyway.