Lone Star Rising: The Texas Rangers Trilogy Review

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(More customer reviews)I was doing a booksigning with western writing icon Elmer Kelton a while back and picked up his book "Lone Star Rising." It's a trilogy of Texas Ranger stories featuring a ranger by the name of Rusty Shannon, and an ongoing feud with several generations of Comanche warriors, set against a cast of other fascinating characters that I guarantee will intrigue you. It's a terrific look at the history of the rangers before, during and after the civil war.
The settings are drawn exceedingly well, the characters are real and compelling, and the story moves at a pace that makes it hard to put down. I was pleased to see that it included a faith element to it, though not enough that it would be aimed for the Christian bookstore shelves. There is a mild spattering of language and light violence, but not enough that would put off a more sensitive reader. It preserves the realism, but is done with Elmer's taste and light touch.
People have always been drawn to the myth and legend of the rangers, but the true story is no less compelling. This force always stood against great odds protecting Texas in the early days as well as in the years to come. This book is a great read, and with three separate books in one volume is a good reading value as well. Easy to recommend.
Terry Burns
Author of the Mysterious Ways Series from River Oak

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In 1999, with Forge's publication of The Buckskin Line, Elmer Kelton launched a series of novels on the formative years of the Texas Rangers. In Texas Justice, the first three of these critically acclaimed books are now brought together in a single volume.In The Buckskin Line, Kelton introduces the red-haired boy captured by a Comanche war party after the massacre of his family. Rescued by Mike Shannon, a member of a Texas "ranging company" protecting settlers from Indian raids, the boy known as Rusty is adopted by the Shannon family. In 1861, Mike Shannon is ambushed and killed, and Rusty follows in his footsteps and joins the Rangers. In the throes of the coming War Between the States, Rusty searches for the Confederates who lynched his adoptive father and awaits meeting the Comanche warrior who killed his family two decades past.At the end of the Civil War, Rusty Shannon is thrown adrift when the Rangers are disbanded, and makes his way to his home on the Red River, where he hopes to marry the girl he left behind, Geneva Monahan. Butas Badger Boy, the second novel of the saga, unfolds, Geneva has married another man in Rusty's absence. Faced with this betrayal, he must contend with the hate-filled Confederate and Union soldiers infesting Texas and with the continuing Indian raids against innocent settlers. Rusty's own childhood captivity returns to haunt him when he rescues Andy, a white child called Badger Boy by his Comanche captors. In The Way of the Coyote,Andy rides with Rusty Shannon as the Rangers are re-formed in postwar turmoil. With Texas overrun with outlaws, disenfranchised Confederate veterans, nightriders, and marauding Comanche bands, Rusty tries to resume his pre-war life. When his friend Shanty, a freed slave, is burned out of his home by Ku Klux Klan and Rusty's own homestead is confiscated by a murderous band of thugs, he must follow perilous trails before he can put the war and its aftermath behind him.Texas Justice is not only a masterful re-creation of the early years of the Texas Rangers, it is vintage Elmer Kelton, the undisputed master of the Western story.

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