Riders of Judgment

Riders of Judgment is the fifth book chronologically in Frederick Manfred's Buckskin Man Tales, which trace themes through five novels set in the 19th Century Great Plains. The story fictionalizes Wyoming's Johnson County War, based on Manfred's original research (which relied heavily on Johnson County Historian Thelma Condit). Keeping in mind that his interests are fictional, his analysis of events is close to the story as recounted in Helena Huntington Smith's The War on Powder River,[1] which was published about ten years after Manfred's novel.

The novel was the source for the made-for-television film The Johnson County War, starring Tom Berenger. Manfred's novelization uses Nate Champion, Jack Flagg, and John Tisdale as the models for his Hammett brothers, Cain, Harry, and Dale, and turns Frank Canton into a strange family nemesis called variously Hunt Lawton and Link Keeler. Manfred changes the names of the county and the nearby towns.

Notes

  1. ↑ Helena Huntington Smith, The War on Powder River (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1967)

References