Inspired by and written during a 1929 cross-country tour with Robert H. Davis, the first editor to give Faust work in 1917, the story was first serialized in 1930 as “Twelve Peers” in the weekly Western Story Magazine, with its six parts published as follows:

Part 1: February 1
Part 2: February 8
Part 3: February 15
Part 4: February 22
Part 5: March 1
Part 6: March 8

It was then collected in novel form as Destry Rides Again, with its first printing published by Dodd, Mead & Company in July, and its copyright registered on August 22, 1930.

In Harry Destry, Faust created a character never before seen at the time: the reluctant western hero. Imbued with Faust’s mythos, Destry moves through the story with the gravity of a figure borne of legend — a man cast down, remade in darkness, and returned to a corrupted town like someone stepping back across the threshold of the underworld. The twelve men who wronged him become less a list of enemies than a series of ordeals, each one exposing a fracture in the community’s soul. And because of Destry’s reluctance to engage in violence, he walks instead with a strange, hard-won clarity and assumes the role of mythic judge — the revenant who forces a fate simply by being what he has become. The story reads less like a western and more like a frontier myth about a man who dies to the world and returns from Hades lit with hellfire for the reckoning.

And the concept of reluctance and naiveté in a western hero was so new and appealing that it caught on, birthing copycats in western stories for years to come, and helped make it one of the most popular western novels of all time — “only Zane Grey’s Nevada and Jack Schaefer’s Shane reportedly have sold more copies than Destry Rides Again.”

Now, as for the text, as per our usual Heathening, we’ve updated some hyphenated words to bring them inline with modern usage (good-by is now goodbye, etc.), and we’ve appended 140+ footnotes throughout the text for clarity, context, and commentary where necessary. In all, we believe our modifications make this the “rootin’est, tootin’est” version of Destry yet available.

Enjoy, cowboy!

“A rapid-fire western thriller, sparing in words, but replete in action.” —The Payson Chronicle

“The hero is no saint, and not averse to painting a town red.” —The Lithgow Mercury

“Ranks with Zane Grey’s Nevada and Jack Shafer’s Shane as one of the great pieces of Western fiction.” —John A. Dinan, The Pulp Western

“[Brand] is at his best when he . . . writes about humans on a human level. He does this in Destry Rides Again . . . his best book, and a good one.” —Cynthia S. Hamilton, Western and Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction in America

“An out-of-the-way cowboy story.” —The Border Chronicle

“One of the most thrilling series of gun fights between the covers of a book.” —Glencoe News

“A capital story so filled with thrills that one cannot lay it aside until the final word is reached.” —Margaret E. Lawrence, The Evening Times-Globe

“Here is a yarn containing the thrills of half a dozen mystery stories, and a Wild West novel rolled into one . . . No one can write this kind of story better than Max Brand, and this is the best book Mr. Brand has written.” —The Globe

“A really excellent story of the Wild West.” —The Leicester Mail

“Thrill to the thundering hoof beats of this intensely interesting novel.” —The World’s News

“In [Brand’s] hands, on a good day, the American Myth can be seen in the making, as king-sized heroes move in pursuit of queen-sized heroines, on a landscape of mythological dimensions.” —Robert Easton, Max Brand, The Big Westerner

Destry Rides Again

• Retail: $13.95
• ISBN-10:
• ISBN-13: 9781948316521
• Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.684 inches
• Weight: x.x oz

• Retail: $23.95
• ISBN-10:
• ISBN-13: 9781963228526
• Dimensions: 8.75 x 5.75 x 0.813 inches
• Weight: x.x oz

• Title Page
• Cover of Western Story Magazine for February 1, 1930
• Heathenry Flame
• Honorary Heathen Headshot: Frederick Faust
• End Title

• Fiction / Western
• Fiction / Action & Adventure
• Fiction / Historical / General