The Texas Rangers cast a big shadow. One of myth and legend but not many known facts.

This is the story of one group of Rangers. They did a lot more than hunt down bad guys. There were land disputes, cattle disputes, Indian problems, and even family feuds.

Sergeant James Brooks was with Company F, and between 1886 and 1888, he was in three fatal fights, had many bullet wounds, chased down countless outlaws, and was even convicted of murder!

While they may have had a larger-than-life presence, when they meet the Conners, they may be in over their heads.

This was a challenge to read. Timelines jumped. Obviously, the author did his research, but it just didn’t feel organized to me. And I did feel lost a few times.

NetGalley/June 28th, 2022 by St. Martin’s Press

Excellent and intriguing history, but the jumping around in the chronology can get confusing. Some more obvious pointers as to the time and the relation to the main action would be helpful. And the use of present tense adds to the confusion.

Red Sky Morning

A few years ago I visited the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame Museum in Waco TX and as a result piqued my interest in reading this book.
Many of the names in this book I remembered from my visit.
The book didn’t disappoint. Very well written and not afraid to show the dark side of the Rangers.
I thoroughly enjoyed this read and highly recommend it.

This book is a compelling and interesting history of the Texas Rangers, life on the frontier as it lurched toward the 20th century and the murderous feuds that were then part of life in east Texas. However, the book was so poorly edited as to make it nearly unreadable. At every point where the narrative has really begun to move it comes to a screeching halt because we are taken back another ten or twenty years to tell yet another story. This is no more true than at what would have been the natural end of the story-the retirement of the main characters-we are forced endure what they did literally until they were buried. It is as if the author, having gathered so much material, feels compelled to use all of it whether or not it contributed to the book.

This book can only be gotten through by liberal page skipping, which is a shame because at the core of the book there lies a terrific story

There is a lot of history in this book and lots of name dropping...so much in fact as to be confusing to this reader. The basic story of the Texas Rangers has been told before but this book takes a more detailed look into it. Many readers would probably enjoy it but it got to be too much detail and name-dropping for this one. I found the flow interrupted at times although there were moments of clarity in painting the Rangers as men with all their foibles.

This book tells a lot of engaging stories about Company F of the Texas Rangers in its heyday, and honestly it makes me more interested in finding a more broad and general history of the Rangers as an overall organization. I would say that the book could have used a firmer editorial hand when it comes to structure and content. It meanders a bit and could stand to be tightened up somewhat. Still, an enjoyable read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity!

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher St. Martin's Press for an advanced copy of this history and biography featuring the Texas Rangers.

Texas Rangers exist in that netherworld of both fact and whole lot more known better fiction in the thoughts of most Americans. Many might know the "One riot, one ranger" comment, but it could have been said by Walker, Texas Ranger. Many know Bonnie and Clyde, but not know about Frank Hamer who led the posse that led to their death. And few probably know about the Porvenir massacre where a group of Rangers, ranchers and some calvary killed 15 unarmed men and boys from Mexico. The Texas Rangers are in the minds of many brave men who fought gutless desperados and tamed a wild west. Not men who stood trial for murder, were used as tools by the powerful to close off the west, and at one point planted dynamite traps to stop barbed wire cutters. These stories and more are told in Joe Pappalardo's Red Sky Morning: The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F, about just one group of rangers and their adventures in slowly changing west.

The book focuses on the two Rangers in particular, James Brooks who was a tough as they came with the wounds to show and a murder trial to prove it. And Captain William Scott who led the Company F in their pursuit of rustlers and fence cutters who fought against the closing of the west by fencing the plains. Their opposite would be the Connor family, a brutal group whose father had no problem shooting first, and shooting to kill. These two groups were fated to meet in a way that would change most of their lives forever.

The book takes on a lot of history not just of the Rangers, but of Texas, cattle industry, free range, barb wire cutting, law politics, rustling, the use of informers in law enforcement. A lot. The book is interesting but the amount of characters and the points of view changing can get a little much, and might be a tad tough to follow. I enjoyed the book, but I do have to admit I might have gotten lost a time or two. There is a lot of detail for just a biography on Company F, and I can see where people might have problems. Though again, I still admit I liked it.

Recommended for Fathers who like the west, and want something more than a good guys, bad guys story. For readers of Jeff Guinn's The Last Gunfight, or War on the Border, Nathan Gorenstein's The Guns of John Moses Browning, even Bryan Burroughs Forget the Alamo.

Red Sky Morning was not what I was expecting at all. I am not sure if it was a book for me. Two and a half stars.

I have just finished the rather arduous task of wading through Joe Pappalardo's "Red Sky Morning: The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F" from an ARC graciously provided to me by St. Martin's Press. Candidly, I am somewhat at a loss for how to respond here. In fairness, there is a lot of detail about life in Texas in the late 19th Century here. On the other hand, and far more important to this reviewer, the ramshackle approach to the narrative structure makes this a tedious read indeed. It puts me in mind of a Master's Thesis in search of a thesis. Its jumping off point, and occasional touchstone, is Company F of the Texas Rangers and their involvement in a number of cases but principally one that reads like a kind of Hatfield and McCoy story set in East Texas with a large cast of colorful characters. That said, the author's narrative structure often defeats whatever point it is he thinks he is making. Confusing time jumps, shifts in tense and the extremely disjointed and anecdotal presentation of the information available simply makes this text a "bridge too far" for this reader. There is useful information here, and the author has made an obvious attempt to document his facts, but the organizational failures here obscure and interfere with any emergent narrative that may be present.

Red Sky Morning
By Joe Pappalardo

This is a work of non-fiction purportedly about the Texas Ranger Company F in the late 1800s. Through a string of loosely strung together anecdotes, the author presents bits and pieces of stories about various Texas Rangers at the time - but much more about family feuds, outlaws, the closing off of the open range in Texas and other stories having little direct relevance to the Rangers.

There is much information about the Connor family, many of whom were involved in killings and feuds and several of whom landed in prison for years. The author spends a great deal of time giving background details about husbands and wives, fathers and sons, and various other family members and neighbors, friends and foes: How long they lived, when they died, where they were buried etc. The cast of characters becomes unwieldy and I found myself mired down in all this and lost track often of who these people even were.

If you are really interested in background about the Texas Rangers of that period, I don't think you will find much to interest you here. This is just a compendium of extraneous information about life in Texas (Sabine County) and Louisiana during that time.