I grew up on westerns, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, and Louis L’Amour. My Hannah Montana was the Roy Rogers show and my Harry Potter was Barnabas and Tyrel Sackett. I read Louis L’Amour throughout middle school until someone asked me why I was always reading “those books” and I realized I hadn’t visited my school library in a while. I hadn’t read a Louis L’Amour since then, though, and I wanted to revisit his repertoire.
I chose to read The Lonesome Gods since that was always a favorite in my family, though I don’t remember it ever being my particular favorite. I remember enjoying select books of the Sackett series in particular (notably the ones with Barnabas and Tyrel Sackett), The Walking Drum, Sitka, and perhaps Bendigo Shafter, so maybe I should have revisited one of those instead, but I didn’t very much remember The Lonesome Gods, and it is one of the quintessential L’Amour books.
As with many prolific writers, Louis L’Amour novels are quite formulaic and predictable, particularly his western novels, and that formula worked well for his audience. He is a gifted storyteller, and his books are entertaining. That was more than enough for me when I was that age where I was just hungry for anything to read. Unfortunately, I am far more picky and I do read for more now that I’m older and have many awe-inspiring classic and contemporary novels under my belt.
I feel like that’s important context because I approach, and probably will always approach, Louis L’Amour novels with a heavy sense of nostalgia, and will probably be entertained through that lens alone. But, I do recognize that there are some many flaws.
The first thing I noticed was its repetitiveness. L’Amour often would remind us of the various mysteries the main character was trying to unravel. I detected two problems in that: 1) there were too many mysteries L’Amour introduced and we could have done well enough without a couple of them just because some of them didn’t give a lot of pay-off, and 2) L’Amour didn’t trust the reader enough to remember all the plot points without constant reminders. And some of the same topics were discussed a bit too often without any new perspective being introduced, like the changing of the western world and how a lot of people there would be left behind in industry.
The transitions could also be abrupt and the passage of time wasn’t always clear. I’m still not sure how old Johannes, our protagonist, was for the majority of the book. Perhaps at the halfway point, he left Los Angeles to gather wild horses, and there was a mention of him knowing Meghan (his insta childhood love) in LA for a few months, but there was another mention of a few years passing while he was in LA. And he seemed a lot older than any of my attempted calculations. So I could never be sure of his age after he first arrived in LA.
The characters alternately seemed inanely clueless or they knew something they reasonably shouldn’t. It was as if some revelations or discoveries happened offscreen (off page?). And many things proposed as theoretical or a possibility were later assumed as fact by the characters without being verified. Again, as if those verifications happened offscreen. And when was Felipe’s cliff murder first mentioned? It was suddenly mentioned multiple times as if it wasn’t entirely random new information. I felt like I had missed a couple of pages somewhere.
Regardless of the flaws, it was refreshing to re-enter the familiar world of Louis L’Amour westerns. I strongly relate to the love of nature and the disappointment of industry overrunning the natural world. I like the emphasis on the importance of education, the importance of reading, and on respect—respect for people and for nature. I’m not sure if I should read one Louis L’Amour book every year until I have reread all of my childhood favorites or if I should leave it in the past…
