The Searchers
by Alan Le May

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Book Reviews of The Searchers

Book Review: Western Classic
Summary: 5 Stars

The tale begins, as so many of them do, with a violent encounter between the savage Comanche Indians and an outnumbered plains family in West Texas. The entire family is killed, except for the youngest daughter, who is kidnapped. The plot has to do with the two men who decide they are going to get her back. One, the brother of the murdered man, is motivated by a white-hot hatred for these Comanches, and the other, the family's 17 year-old stepchild, is motivated by his love for his ten-year old captured sister. It is a journey which takes them them through the trackless wastes of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, and lasts for six years.

Like so many great novels, the beauty of this one is in the small things. Mart, for example, the stepchild, continues his relentless search because of a memory he has of the child. On the day she was lost, she came to him and asked him to help her with a calendar she was trying to create. He gruffly shooed her away. This memory torments him and compels him to continue his quest. The brother-in-law, Amos, we learn, also had a long-standing and unspoken love for his brother's wife. So this quest, this almost unendurable quest, is begun on the most simple, honest, human terms.

The novel is also about the women who populated this wilderness. For most it is a life of daily drudgery, but rewarded with the realization that they have truly created something out of nothing. Life for a young woman, with a young woman's desires and needs, is painted artistically as well.

Le May displays a tremendous knowledge of Indian culture, specifically the Comanches, that is absolutely fascinating. We learn that they do not leave their dead on the battlefield. We learn about their burial customs, and what they think is important in the afterlife. They are magnificent horsemen, circling and interweaving nearer and nearer their enemy, giving them only the most meager and difficult of shots, and always allowing themselves a chance for a quick retreat. I was particularly interested to learn that their names can sometimes change over the course of a lifetime, and that they are not always as easily translatable as they would appear to be in TV westerns. Mart, who eventually learns the Comanche language, comments that a Comanche name known in the white world as "Big Red Food," would probably be more aptly translated as "Raw Meat."

Also interesting is the bit of history we learn about West Texas. Apparently, before the Civil War, the Texas Rangers had mostly driven out the Comanche tribes. But after the war the Rangers were disbanded, the federal government did not keep its promise to police the area, and the natives gradually returned . . . with deadly results.

But this is only the icing on the cake. The true joy of this novel is its sheer narrative force, and the compelling, descriptive nature of Le May's prose. Mart stands in the homestead kitchen after months on the prairie and is concerned that he smells bad. The author points out that his smell is really only juniper smoke, leather, and prairie wind, but that he couldn't have known that. A rider is shot, "his body crumpled as it hit, and rolled over once, as shot game rolls, before it lay still." Very descriptive, very observant, and only two small examples of the kind of thing to be found on practically every page.

And last but certainly not least are the thematic implications stemming from the way the story ends. I am not going to give away anything, but will simply say that Amos, motivated by hate, comes to the end in a far different way than Mart, who is motivated by love. The last paragraph of this novel is splendidly powerful, and very rewarding.

It is the kind of novel that transcends the genre. Like Lonesome Dove, Mountain Man, Pemmican, or The Virginian, to name only a few, it is more than just a great western, it is a great novel.

Summary of The Searchers

Westerns Books

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