Book Review: Hondo

Title: Hondo

Author: Louis L’Amour

Publisher: Bantam

Date: 1953

ISBN: 0-499-14255-8

Length: 159 pages

Quote: “A man…without a child was no man at all. Johnny. If there had been no son of his own, he could at least have given Johnny what he had learned.”

It’s another tale of the wild, wild West, where otherwise good people were continually obliged to kill one another: Hondo Lane, who is technically a half-breed but whom the wild West accepts as White just to even the numbers a little bit, sees Angie Lowe, her little farmhouse, and her son, and instantly wishes he were her husband. Her husband is a missing person. Hondo rides off into the desert, trying to put Angie, home, and little Johnny out of his mind, and just accidentally happens to have to kill a man, obviously a baddie, who happens to be carrying a tintype of little Johnny. Now if he could only tell Angie how he knows that she’s free to marry him…

Louis L’Amour was pushing the envelope. A large part of the audience for “westerns” were little boys who preferred their stories free from Mushy Stuff. Another part was parents of little boys, who wanted their little boys exposed to wholesome tales of murder with no mention of adultery, and in Hondo we see that Hondo and Angie are physically attracted to each other while Angie is legally married, even if her husband has that nasty little habit of hiding out in the desert for months on end. Needless to say, it’s not the horse (a “lineback,” with a dark dorsal stripe on an otherwise dun coat) Hondo will be kissing at the end, and aren’t all western movies supposed to end with the lead cowboy gratefully face-bumping with his horse before he saddles up and rides off into the sunset? Nevertheless, John Wayne, who read this kind of book when considering his next job, pronounced Hondo the “best western novel I have ever read.”

It’s been replayed on cable TV fairly often, so you already know who else is going to kill whom else. As a collector you don’t care. I have acquired a copy just for you, the lurking local collector. Come and get it.