Return to Red River

by Johnny D. Boggs

Winner of the 2017 Spur Award for Best Paperback Western “Boggs is unparalleled in evoking the gritty reality of the Old West.”—The Shootist Red River is one of the greatest westerns ever told, a novel that that became the classic John Wayne movie in 1948. Now award-winning Johnny D.  Boggs presents a powerful follow-up—destined to be a western masterpiece in its own right. RETURN TO RED RIVER Mathew Garth was orphaned in a savage wagon train ambush and adopted by Red River hero Thomas Dunson. Twenty years later Matt has two strapping sons of his own and is undertaking a desperate cattle drive from Texas to Dodge City, the new queen of frontier cattle towns.   While the deadly dangers of storms and rustlers gather around them, an act of passion and violence from within the drive—and from within the Garth family—leaves Matt fighting for his life, close to where his father was buried by the Red River. When Matt gets back up, he must finish the drive and fight his worst enemies—and even his own blood kin before it ends in a battle of guns, tears, and justice. “Johnny Boggs has produced another instant page-turner...don’t put down the book until you finish it.”—Tony Hillerman on Killstraight  “Johnny D. Boggs tells a crisply powerful story that rings true more than two centuries after the bloody business was done.”—The Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier on The Despoilers

Genres: Westerns

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 26, 2016

About the author

Johnny D. Boggs is a Spur- and Wrangler Award-winning author of the American West and frontier. Born in 1962, Boggs grew up on a farm near Timmonsville, South Carolina, around the old stamping grounds of Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion (chronicled in his frontier novel The Despoilers). He knew he wanted to be a writer at an early age. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, Lisa Smith; son, Jack Smith Boggs; and basset hound, June.

Reviews

[Joe Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This western tells you everything you'd want to know about a cattle drive plus sum. Some violence occurs early, but the expected action with rustlers comes late in the story. The writing is descriptive and well-paced.

[Joyce B. Lohse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Return To Red River follows up on Borden Chase's novel, Red River, 1948, and the movie of the same name, staring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. Without yet reading the first book or seeing the movie, I relied on the lengthy beginning narrative to fill in characters, and details about time and place. Once oriented, the reader is rewarded with raw, authentic western action throughout the novel.
Mathew Garth and his family face a string of dangerous obstacles while they pull together to trail drive their cattle to market from Texas across the Red River to Kansas. The stakes are high when a hard-nosed banker loans needed money for the drive, but requiring the Garth ranch home as collateral. Unsure who to trust, The Garths and their cowboys forge ahead, facing outlaws, stampedes, floods, storms, death, and fire along the trail. Memories from previous encounters and challenges along the trail haunt and torment Garth and his cowboys. Mathew's wife, Tess, is a strong-willed participant, along with his sons, Tom and Lightning. Hopefully, the sons appear in future stories by Boggs, a talented journalist and author. Johnny D. Boggs, a contemporary author, preserves western spirit and history through his authentic portrayal and insightful writing.

[Garth Mailman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Return to Red River
Johnny D. Boggs

In slang terminology that surname refers to an unsanitary bar room toilet. Matthew Garth, as the story begins is on horseback slogging through nearly waist high snow checking out cattle frozen to death in an atypical Texas Blue Norther when they encountered a barbed wire fence.

His two sons, Lightening and Tom have gone to do the town--the livery, the saloon to wet their whistles, the brothel to wet their wicks, the hotel for a room, and the wrong bar to start a brawl, 8 against 2. They live to tell about it, the bar, not so much.

This becomes the story of a cattle drive: 3000 head of longhorns Texas to Dodge City, Kansas. It’s the most detailed accounting of such a trek I’ve encountered replete with Spanish and Texan jargon and flashbacks in Matt’s memory to earlier drives including one 20 years ago that saw a boy born to a soiled dove who later died, the boy becoming Lightening his first born, though only by adoption, Tom coming naturally two years later. Can such a fact remain a secret?

And is someone in Matt’s employ trying to sabotage him. He has loan from the bank of which he is a director with his home ranch as collateral.

So prairie fires, bushwhackers, hostile Indians, stampedes, heat, flies, dust, lightening.

[Thomas Clagett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific read! Return to Red River is a rugged tale, searing and engaging.

Red River, the 1948 film starring John Wayne, was based on Borden Chase’s novel that was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. But there are some significant differences between the film and Chase’s novel, in particular, who’s left standing at the conclusion of each. However, we discover all that Chase had told before as Boggs tells a new story with Mathew Garth leading a cattle drive to try to save the ranch he and Thomas Dunson started twenty years earlier.

There are torrential storms and vicious rustlers and dangerous river crossings, along with some clever twists and some truly unexpected moments, all told with an authority of authenticity.

[Michael Morrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe it was my fault, not author Johnny D. Boggs', but I -- who love most of his works -- could not find "Return" very exciting.
Maybe because I know only the John Wayne movie "Red River" and not the original book upon which it is based, "Return" never did fit comfortably into my mind.
Then, too, the action, of which there is plenty, seemed, not forced, but expected, sometimes telegraphed.
Maybe normal people will like this book as much as I've liked other of his works.

[DANIEL CHIAPPONE · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read if you liked the movie Red River

The movie Red River was sensational, starring John Wayne, and many other great actors. Return to Red River draws upon several scenes from the movie while telling another great story.

[Douglas Osgood · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a ride.

Author Johnny Boggs spins a yarn that starts building with page 1 and snowballs to the exciting climax. The last of it kept me up well past my bed time.

[Susan Santangelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Authentic, gritty and fast moving, this is as good as it gets for lovers of stories set in the Old West.

[Brad Hodges · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some might find it audacious for Johnny D. Boggs to write a sequel to Red River, the classic 1948 film starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. Actually, he has written a sequel to the book that it was based on, and it's a solid, old-fashioned Western that could have been written in 1948.

The book picks up with Matthew Garth, who was played by Clift, as he manages the ranch he inherited from Thomas Dunson (who was played by Wayne). It's twenty years later. He married Tess Millay, the prostitute (although that word isn't used in the film or in this book) and has two sons, Lightning and Tom. The secret is that Lightning is not their natural son.

Garth, like Dunson twenty years later, is short on cash, and has to drive his cattle across the Red River and into Kansas. The book takes a little too long setting this up--I think the drive starts about halfway into the action.

"Longhorns. Some of these, no, probably almost every last one of them, a descendant of the first cattle brought to Mexico by Gregorio de Villalobos back in 1591, after Christopher Columbus had deposited some in Santo Domingo back in 1494. Around 1690, a herd numbering roughly two hundred had been trailed to a Texas mission near the Sabine River. Now Mathew Garth had to get these cattle to Dodge City, Kansas." This kind of stentorian prose and research is to reading like macaroni and cheese is to food. It's not great, but it's comforting, especially to those who like old Westerns.

The cattle drive, of course, is fraught with danger--a stampede, a fire, and someone following them. It may be Jess Teveler, wanted by the Texas Rangers, and who has something against the Garths. The ending provides the traditional showdown and gunplay.

Every once in a while a read like this is a great switch from literary fiction. Boggs is clearly a student of this genre. And any book that can have a passage like this is fine with me: "For more than five weeks, they had been wet, and they had been dry. Baking underneath a broiling sun or freezing in their soaking clothes after a cold rain. Mostly, they had been bone tired, aching, miserable. Awake before sunrise, then in a saddle till noon, a quick bite of food washed down with coffee, a fresh horse, and back in the saddle."

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. I can see why it won Spur Award.