Dead Man's Walk (Pan Macmillan)

The story of the early days of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, heroes of Lonesome Dove. These are the days when Gus and Call - two of the most beloved figures in American fiction - were young Texas rangers, first experiencing the wild frontier that will form their characters. We also meet Clara Forsythe, the spirited, unforgettable young woman whose effect on Gus is immediate and unshakeable. Danger, sacrifice and fear test these two young men to the limits of endurance; friendship, comradeship and love give them the strength and courage to survive against almost insurmountable odds in the West of the early nineteenth century. Not yet twenty - coming of age in the days when Texas was still an independent republic - Gus and Call enlist as Texas Rangers under the command of Caleb Cobb, a capricious land pirate who wants to seize Santa Fe from the Mexicans. Gus and Call experience their first great adventure in the barren, empty landscape of the great plains, in which arbitrary violence is the rule - whether from nature, or from the Indians whose territory they must cross in order to reach New Mexico.The untamed frontier, and the reckless men who live there, are at the heart of this novel.