"Comanche Moon" by Larry McMurtry, a brilliant and haunting novel richly capable of standing on its own, completes the author's epic four-volume cycle of novels of the American West that began in 1985 with the Pulitzer Prize -- winning masterpiece, "Lonesome Dove."

We join Texas Rangers August McCrae and Woodrow F. Call in their middle years, just beginning to deal with the perplexing tensions of adult life -- Gus and his great love, Clara Forsythe; Call and Maggie Tilton, the young whore who loves him --when they enlist with a Ranger troop in pursuit of Buffalo Hump, the great Comanche war chief; Kicking Wolf, the celebrated Comanche horse thief; and a deadly Mexican bandit king with a penchant for torture. Assisting the Rangers in their wild chase is the renowned Kickapoo tracker, Famous Shoes.

"Comanche Moon" joins the twenty-year time line between "Dead Man's Walk" and "Lonesome Dove," as we follow beloved heroes Gus and Call and their comrades-in-arms -- Deets, Jake Spoon, and Pea Eye Parker -- in their bitter struggle to protect an advancing Western frontier against the defiant Comanches, courageously determined to defend