The Wonderful Country

By Tom Lea

Book Overview

Tom Lea's The Wonderful Country opens as mejicano pistolero Martin Bredi is returning to El Puerto [El Paso] after a fourteen-year absence. Bredi carries a gun for the Chihuahuan warlord Cipriano Castro and is on Castro's business in Texas. Fourteen years earlier -- shortly after the end of the Civil War -- when he was the boy Martin Brady, he killed the man who murdered his father and fled to Mexico where he became Martin Bredi. Back in Texas Brady breaks a leg; then he falls in love with a married woman while recuperating; and, finally, to right another wrong, he kills a man. When Brady/Bredi returns to Mexico, the Castros distrust him as an American. He becomes a man without a country. The Wonderful Country clearly depicts life along the Texas-Mexico border of a century-and-a-half ago, when Texas and Mexico were being settled and tamed.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0890961859
• ISBN13: 9780890961858
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
• Length: 387 Pages
• Weight: 1.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Great Tex-Mex border western

This is perhaps my all-time favorite "western" novel. Set on either side of the El Paso Del Norte border (El Paso, Texas on the USA side), featuring an American who has grown up in Mexico and is a combination ranch hand/pistolero for a Mexican ranchero. It's the tail of his trip north of the border on business for the ranchero, and his awakening to his "homeland" while recuperating from a broken leg that keeps him from returning to Mexico. His horse, Lagrimas (Spanish for "Tears") is featured throughout, showing the bond a man has with his, very special, horse. This is somewhat less action-oriented, and more "adult" than your typical Louis Lamour western, but should satisfy even the typical L.L. fan and then some. I first read this as a teenager (14-15), and have re-read it many times over the years. I may buy another copy for each of my three sets of grandkids, for part of their education.