Beyond the Outposts

By: Max Brand

Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori

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.

©1997 Jane Faust Easton and Adriana Faust Bianchi (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Tabori has a gruff, guttural reading style with speech patterns that fit this gritty cowboy narrative....Tabori's gravelly voice flows expressively....A real man's tale that Brand fans will enjoy." (AudioFile)
"Brand's classic western roils from one hair-raising adventure and conflict to the next....Tabori's gravelly tones suit the title well. (Booklist)

Best narration ever.

Narrators skill adds a brilliant, shining quality, to what is already
the richest of jewels. What a treasure
to enjoy.

This narrator is awesome

Narrator is so passionate in his narration, I feel like he is telling the story around a camp fire and like he was really there. I read this book as a teen. What an excellent action-packed story.

One of his best

The reader is one of the best I’ve heard, I’m sure he could make almost any story exciting but a well written one like this and it’s a home run!

Highly recommend!

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.

Sweeping Adventure

I picked this book because I had to use my ten dollar credit before it expired, and I hadn't listened to a Western story in years. Just looking for a change of pace, and a fairly quick listen. I made a great uninformed choice . . . I had not read anything by Max Brand, nor listened to any narration by Kristoffer Tabori. The story is very good and pulls you in like any other well crafted tale. However, this story is ment to be read out loud. The combination of Mr. Brand's story and the wonderful rich Western base of Mr. Tabori is magic. This is what you hope your experience of listening to Audible books is like! Get this book - even if you don't consider your a follower of Western's (I don't), you will enjoy this adventure.

Hungry for more...

This was one of the best stories I've listened to so far with Audible. To the Writers credit the story was fantastic and the Narator was the perfect choice. From the second track I was hooked and couldn't lay it down. EXCELLENT!

loved it

I enjoyed this book. I listen to a book a day at work, (benefit of being self employed). its started out so-so but picked up as it went on. I loved it

My absolute all time favorite 📖

Max Brand was a genius writer in every sense of the word. He shoulda seen super fame in his life!

Beyond the Outposts

I am a total lover of westerns and have read most of Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour. This book is totally awesome and sometimes the reader can make or break an audio-book. This reader was incredible. You will never hear more emotion from a reader than this one. It all gave the book such incredible color. I am enjoying several of Max Brand but this is so special and due to the narrator. Enjoy it and I highly recommend it.

above average old western

What made the experience of listening to Beyond the Outposts the most enjoyable?

Many of the old stories from the early 1900's are too dated even for fans revisiting an old book. This story was not like that. Of course, it is over 80 years since it was published I think. It is dated, simplistic and predictable like any of those old westerns, but not to the point that you can not enjoy it still.

What did you like best about this story?

No glaring errors in historical space, time, physics or gun lore.

How could the performance have been better?

The narrator succeeded in making the story painful to listen to. Way over the top dramatization that had more the flavor of an actor reading for a part in a play rather than a narrator reading a book.