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The Undersung Black Cowboy Behind a Beloved ‘Lonesome Dove’ Character

Tags: texas
DATE POSTED:June 3, 2025
photo illustration of joshua deets and bose ikardLarry McMurtry wanted Lonesome Dove to upend the traditional western novel. But the book, which was published forty years ago this month, elicited a different reaction than he expected. “To the public at large, I had produced something nearer to an idealization,” he later wrote. “Instead of a poor man’s inferno, filled with violence, faithlessness, and betrayal, I had actually delivered a kind of Gone With the Wind of the West, a turnabout I’ll be mulling over for a long, long time.”McMurtry did, though, upset tradition in one respect: Joshua Deets, one of the book’s most beloved characters, was likely the first Black cowboy many readers had ever heard of. That’s a shame, given that Black cowboys played a major role in the history of…

The post The Undersung Black Cowboy Behind a Beloved ‘Lonesome Dove’ Character appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Tags: texas