What do you think?
Rate this book
Beyond the Outposts
From pre-Civil War Virginia to the prairies of the far west, this epic follows young Lew Dorset as he journeys in search of his father. Lew's skill with firearms gets him a job as a hunter with a trader heading onto the prairies to barter with the Indians. There he meets young Chuck Morris, and together they take on a Cheyenne attack party. Finding shelter in a Sioux village, they absorb the native culture. Lew comes to know the great Sioux chieftains, becoming blood brothers with Sitting Wolf, while Chuck marries the beautiful maiden Zintcallasappa. After Lew plays a decisive role in a battle between the Sioux and Pawnee, he returns to find that Chuck has deserted his wife and son. His attempts to reconcile them culminate in great danger and, ultimately, a threat to his life.
- GenresWesterns
7 pages, Audio CD
First published January 1, 1997
17 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Max Brand
1,824 books135 followersFrederick Schiller Faust (see also Frederick Faust), aka Frank Austin, George Owen Baxter, Walter C. Butler, George Challis, Evin Evan, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, David Manning, Peter Henry Morland, Lee Bolt, Peter Dawson, Martin Dexter, Dennis Lawson, M.B., Hugh Owen, Nicholas Silver
Max Brand, one of America's most popular and prolific novelists and author of such enduring works as Destry Rides Again and the Doctor Kildare stories, died on the Italian front in 1944.
Max Brand, one of America's most popular and prolific novelists and author of such enduring works as Destry Rides Again and the Doctor Kildare stories, died on the Italian front in 1944.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 15, 2019
An exceptional coming-of-age story telling the tale of Lew Dorsett, a boy who grows into manhood influenced by the quest to find his outlaw father, his high adventures living with Sioux Indians, and his relationship with his best friend Chuck Morris. I would have to say that this is now my favorite Max Brand book.
July 19, 2010
One of the best westerns I have come across in a long time.
However, if your are a book listener as well as a book reader like me, than do yourself a favor and listen to this book instead. The narration in this audio book by Kristoffer Tabori is one of the best I have ever come across. His low guttural draw and raspy tones and the emotion he put into each sentence was just crazy beautiful.
However, if your are a book listener as well as a book reader like me, than do yourself a favor and listen to this book instead. The narration in this audio book by Kristoffer Tabori is one of the best I have ever come across. His low guttural draw and raspy tones and the emotion he put into each sentence was just crazy beautiful.
September 8, 2018
A very good Western adventure, which I highly recommend, but it's not without its faults, although they are small and almost trivial. For example, the main character's personality doesn't strike me as one who would be so easily drawn by mere beauty, yet he falls for the girl at first sight. It feels a bit contrived. The surprise towards the ending is not a surprise at all, although there are plenty of small twists and turns along the way. In parts it was a bit far fetched, but overall it was fun. I also loved the main character's voice as he was the narrator of the story, giving it a sort of Huckleberry-Finn feel, although not nearly as folksy as that great classic. The vivid descriptions, action, and heroic feats made it very entertaining enough to suspend one's disbelief. Well worth reading, despite the negatives.
April 23, 2024
Pulp Western Prairie Bromance Tragedy
“It seemed a fitting thing to me that such a man as my father, having gone on his way through the country, should drag behind him a wake of this sort, full of hatred and blind fury. I remember that I rejoiced because of the greatness of his strength—because to a boy nothing seems really worthwhile but strong hands and a stout heart.”
Under at least seventeen pseudonyms Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944) wrote hundreds of novels, short stories, and poems in multiple genres, including mystery, romance, and medical. His most famous pseudonym was Max Brand, under which he published umpteen early 20th-century pulp westerns like the book that was turned into the classic 1939 movie (with Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich!) Destry Rides Again. Beyond the Outposts (serialized in 1925) is the first novel of Brand’s I’ve read, and I found it pretty impressive: a compact, serious pulp grandfather to Thomas Berger’s more sprawling and humorous Little Big Man (1964).
Brand’s first-person narrator, Lew Dorset starts by saying, “Books are queer things, mostly written by people who want to show how many ways they can tell a lie,” only to claim that “Everything that I put down here is fact, and I hope the doubters will come to me for the proofs. That includes you, Chuck Morris. All that I write is the truth and only half the truth, at that, because how can Indians and the prairie be packed into words?”
After that provocative prologue, Lew concisely tells the story of his life from a babe to a twenty-two year old man, including the loss of his mother and father at birth, the abusive upbringing at the hands of his slimy and sadistic uncle, his flight from Virginia to the prairie in pursuit of his outlaw father, his adoption by the Sioux and life among them, and above all his tragic bromance with the aforementioned Chuck Morris, his best friend who, he hints early on, ended up his bitterest foe.
The complexity of Chuck Morris’ character and relationship with Lew is neat. When sixteen-year-old Lew first meets the two years older Chuck, Chuck seems more moral and aware because of his passionate denouncement of slavery, while Lew ignorantly and furiously defends “Virginia gentlemen” and their slave system. After recovering from the brutal fight sparked by their disagreement, they become inseparable bosom buddies, with Lew doing a fair amount of hero worship of the older boy, finding Chuck the most handsome man he's ever seen, a hero a young God with a golden head and flashing eyes, and muscle and pride and strength beyond his size. Chuck also teaches Lew how to survive on the prairie and gives him valuable perspective on Indians, pointing out that there are good and bad Indians just like with white men. But as the novel develops, Chuck becomes a self-centered, irresponsible, unethical heel who doesn’t take being criticized or rejected very well and says things like, “It's not what a man is but what he seems to be” that counts.
The book is a paean to guns (at one point Lew opines that shooting a rifle is a science using your head like taking pictures with a camera, whereas shooting a pistol is an art using the heart like making an oil painting), horses (the legendary wild White Smoke is glorious), and the prairie (sublime and open, though maybe it had richer life than Brand writes it). Its depiction of Native Americans is often impressively ahead of its times, criticizing the “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” concept, demonstrating how different tribes had different cultures, relating with respect and interest details of prairie Indian culture (from fighting to marrying), and condemning the practice of white people to trade trash to the Indians like poor quality knives, defective guns, and strong, impure alcohol.
However, Lew falls in love with a white girl instead of with an Indian girl, he repeatedly says things like, “I had to return to my own kind,” he calls Pawnees and Cheyenne “horse-thieving red devils,” and the Sioux girl Chuck falls in love with, Black Bird, is the most attractive young lady in camp because she’s half white: “No Indian ever had eyes so big and tender or hair so soft.” Finally, much of Brand’s novel reads like a western Princess of Mars, wherein a white man leads a bunch of barbarians to victory against their enemies.
Thus, it’s a mixed bag re race and cultural understanding, much more sympathetic to Indians than most other genre works of its era, but still condescending to them.
About gender, it’s less impressive. Black Bird is underdeveloped and so is Lew’s love interest Mary. The vivid characters are all male. Chuck and Lew and his Father and Sitting Wolf and Standing Bear are all much more interesting than any female character.
Some things get a little obvious in the plot, like the identity of the Pawnee war chief Bald Eagle, which I figured out ten chapters before Lew thinks of it.
But Brand writes some wise lines about human nature etc., like “It rarely pays to bribe a person through affection; it costs a part of their love.”
And some vivid similes, like “They handled me as if I were a fire that might go out and like a fire that might burn them to a crisp.”
And some savory dialogue, like “You sneakin’ wolves… can’t you find no man-sized meat? Have you got to eat veal?”
And the ending is bracingly bleak.
Kristoffer Tabori, with his deep scratchy weathered voice, is the ideal reader for the audiobook.
“It seemed a fitting thing to me that such a man as my father, having gone on his way through the country, should drag behind him a wake of this sort, full of hatred and blind fury. I remember that I rejoiced because of the greatness of his strength—because to a boy nothing seems really worthwhile but strong hands and a stout heart.”
Under at least seventeen pseudonyms Frederick Schiller Faust (1892-1944) wrote hundreds of novels, short stories, and poems in multiple genres, including mystery, romance, and medical. His most famous pseudonym was Max Brand, under which he published umpteen early 20th-century pulp westerns like the book that was turned into the classic 1939 movie (with Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich!) Destry Rides Again. Beyond the Outposts (serialized in 1925) is the first novel of Brand’s I’ve read, and I found it pretty impressive: a compact, serious pulp grandfather to Thomas Berger’s more sprawling and humorous Little Big Man (1964).
Brand’s first-person narrator, Lew Dorset starts by saying, “Books are queer things, mostly written by people who want to show how many ways they can tell a lie,” only to claim that “Everything that I put down here is fact, and I hope the doubters will come to me for the proofs. That includes you, Chuck Morris. All that I write is the truth and only half the truth, at that, because how can Indians and the prairie be packed into words?”
After that provocative prologue, Lew concisely tells the story of his life from a babe to a twenty-two year old man, including the loss of his mother and father at birth, the abusive upbringing at the hands of his slimy and sadistic uncle, his flight from Virginia to the prairie in pursuit of his outlaw father, his adoption by the Sioux and life among them, and above all his tragic bromance with the aforementioned Chuck Morris, his best friend who, he hints early on, ended up his bitterest foe.
The complexity of Chuck Morris’ character and relationship with Lew is neat. When sixteen-year-old Lew first meets the two years older Chuck, Chuck seems more moral and aware because of his passionate denouncement of slavery, while Lew ignorantly and furiously defends “Virginia gentlemen” and their slave system. After recovering from the brutal fight sparked by their disagreement, they become inseparable bosom buddies, with Lew doing a fair amount of hero worship of the older boy, finding Chuck the most handsome man he's ever seen, a hero a young God with a golden head and flashing eyes, and muscle and pride and strength beyond his size. Chuck also teaches Lew how to survive on the prairie and gives him valuable perspective on Indians, pointing out that there are good and bad Indians just like with white men. But as the novel develops, Chuck becomes a self-centered, irresponsible, unethical heel who doesn’t take being criticized or rejected very well and says things like, “It's not what a man is but what he seems to be” that counts.
The book is a paean to guns (at one point Lew opines that shooting a rifle is a science using your head like taking pictures with a camera, whereas shooting a pistol is an art using the heart like making an oil painting), horses (the legendary wild White Smoke is glorious), and the prairie (sublime and open, though maybe it had richer life than Brand writes it). Its depiction of Native Americans is often impressively ahead of its times, criticizing the “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” concept, demonstrating how different tribes had different cultures, relating with respect and interest details of prairie Indian culture (from fighting to marrying), and condemning the practice of white people to trade trash to the Indians like poor quality knives, defective guns, and strong, impure alcohol.
However, Lew falls in love with a white girl instead of with an Indian girl, he repeatedly says things like, “I had to return to my own kind,” he calls Pawnees and Cheyenne “horse-thieving red devils,” and the Sioux girl Chuck falls in love with, Black Bird, is the most attractive young lady in camp because she’s half white: “No Indian ever had eyes so big and tender or hair so soft.” Finally, much of Brand’s novel reads like a western Princess of Mars, wherein a white man leads a bunch of barbarians to victory against their enemies.
Thus, it’s a mixed bag re race and cultural understanding, much more sympathetic to Indians than most other genre works of its era, but still condescending to them.
About gender, it’s less impressive. Black Bird is underdeveloped and so is Lew’s love interest Mary. The vivid characters are all male. Chuck and Lew and his Father and Sitting Wolf and Standing Bear are all much more interesting than any female character.
Some things get a little obvious in the plot, like the identity of the Pawnee war chief Bald Eagle, which I figured out ten chapters before Lew thinks of it.
But Brand writes some wise lines about human nature etc., like “It rarely pays to bribe a person through affection; it costs a part of their love.”
And some vivid similes, like “They handled me as if I were a fire that might go out and like a fire that might burn them to a crisp.”
And some savory dialogue, like “You sneakin’ wolves… can’t you find no man-sized meat? Have you got to eat veal?”
And the ending is bracingly bleak.
Kristoffer Tabori, with his deep scratchy weathered voice, is the ideal reader for the audiobook.
May 13, 2017
Excellent story about Indian life.
This is a great western story of a young man who escapes a brutal life to search for his father in the old west. He makes friends with another young man and ends up a hero to the Sioux Indian Nation. Lots of interesting and brutal things happen along the way as he searches for his father out west. Story ends with some surprise twists
This is a great western story of a young man who escapes a brutal life to search for his father in the old west. He makes friends with another young man and ends up a hero to the Sioux Indian Nation. Lots of interesting and brutal things happen along the way as he searches for his father out west. Story ends with some surprise twists
January 27, 2024
A few years ago I discovered westerns and since then have read scores by several authors. This book is, by quite a large margin, the best. It has all the Indian fights, fisticuffs and Indians as any other, but the depth of the characters and their emotional attachments rival any fiction. Most westerns are serials. There is too much depth and emotion to this to ever have a follow-up.
If you want a great narrated audiobook, this is definitely the one. Kristoffer Taboori does a great job reading/acting the book. I am off to find other books he has read.
If you want a great narrated audiobook, this is definitely the one. Kristoffer Taboori does a great job reading/acting the book. I am off to find other books he has read.
June 23, 2024
Lew Dorsett is a Virginia boy who is being raised by a cruel uncle because his father is in prison for murder. When his father breaks out and says he is going west, Lew follows him. He meets Chuck Morris, the man who is to become his best friend and, later, worst enemy and the two grow into manhood while living with Sioux Indians. I listened to this book on a long drive through Oklahoma and Texas, and Kristoffer Tabori, the narrator for the audio book had the perfect gravely voice for this fun (if predictable) coming-of-age story. I wish the ending hadn't been quite so abrupt.
May 19, 2018
Audio book - great narrator, really brings the book alive. Written years ago so maybe not the most politically correct, but paints a very vivid picture of a place and time. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
December 29, 2019
Page-turner!
January 25, 2020
Incredible
Wonderful writing a masterpiece in content and style. Marvelous way that he can interpret feelings and thoughts of the characters. A definitive read .
Wonderful writing a masterpiece in content and style. Marvelous way that he can interpret feelings and thoughts of the characters. A definitive read .
August 17, 2022
This may very well be my favorite western story! Max Brand is a master. Loved it!
October 20, 2025
Autobook. wow. some gritty writung
May 31, 2015
After reading the reviews of the other readers, I reread this book. But my two-star rating stays the same. Sorry.
So big blond Chuck Morris left an Indian woman with a child and so Lew Dorsett,(Black Bear) turned against him; a beautiful white stallion faster than any other horse,(White Smoke) that he "gentled" and he alone could ride; An Indian chief that he beats in hand-to-hand combat after killing most of the Indian's tribe,and he ends up with the white girl at the end. It was written years ago, so I guess Native American instead of Indian . . . but it's just too trite, too ho-hum for me.
So big blond Chuck Morris left an Indian woman with a child and so Lew Dorsett,(Black Bear) turned against him; a beautiful white stallion faster than any other horse,(White Smoke) that he "gentled" and he alone could ride; An Indian chief that he beats in hand-to-hand combat after killing most of the Indian's tribe,and he ends up with the white girl at the end. It was written years ago, so I guess Native American instead of Indian . . . but it's just too trite, too ho-hum for me.
July 2, 2011
A great cowboy and Indian story thus far.
May 2, 2012
One of the best books of any genre.
October 2, 2013
Beyond the Outposts is a wild wild west, cowboys and Indians round-up. This is a must for any fan of westerns. It's also great for anyone who just likes a good yarn.
December 18, 2013
A Good action packed read on fatherhood.
February 20, 2016
I listened to this as an audiobook. The speaker was outstanding. I really enjoyed the story. I thought it flowed like an old John Wayne film
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews