Thunder Moon and the Sky People

by Max Brand

The Thunder Moon series represents some of Max Brand’s best work, originally published in 1927–28 as a series of interlocking stories. The University of Nebraska Press is now republishing these stories uncut and in the sequence Faust intended, with careful reference to the original typescripts. In order, the works appear in four volumes as The Legend of Thunder Moon, Red Wind and Thunder Moon, Thunder Moon and the Sky People, and Farewell, Thunder Moon. Thunder Moon and the Sky People originally appeared as stories in 1927 issues of Western Story Magazine . In this work, Thunder Moon undertakes his greatest quest, seeking the long-forgotten home from which he was abducted as a child by Big Hard Face, chief of the Suhtai band of the Cheyennes. Betrayed by and alienated from the people among whom he was raised and whom he had led so successfully in war upon their traditional enemies the Comanches and the Pawnees, Thunder Moon is accompanied only by his faithful friend Standing Antelope. What he finds among the unfamiliar whites is much more than he expected, but much less than the consternation the strange Cheyenne hero brings to those he has not seen since he was an infant. Yet on all his travels and during all his perils, he cannot escape the spell cast on him by the enigmatic Indian beauty Red Wind.

210 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Frederick Schiller Faust (see also Frederick Faust), aka Frank Austin, George Owen Baxter, Walter C. Butler, George Challis, Evin Evan, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, David Manning, Peter Henry Morland, Lee Bolt, Peter Dawson, Martin Dexter, Dennis Lawson, M.B., Hugh Owen, Nicholas Silver

Max Brand, one of America's most popular and prolific novelists and author of such enduring works as Destry Rides Again and the Doctor Kildare stories, died on the Italian front in 1944.

Reviews

[Peter Breit]

I quite enjoyed how the author juxtaposed the alternating names of William Sutton / Thunder Moon within the context of the same chapters and situations, depending on how interactions or conversations occurred. The plot was decent, but not particularly noteworthy or original. Prose was fine, though I wonder about historic and cultural accuracy.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third in the Thunder Moon series. Like the others there's a few errors which I think may have been from subsequent editing when patching up this pulp fiction into these novels. They are minor though and easily overlooked. Overall I enjoyed the tale and Brand did a great job of bringing the plains and the Cheyenne riding upon them to life.