SOURCE: "The Eve of Destruction," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 19, 1997, p. 6.

In the following review of Zeke and Ned, Maynard, a novelist, states that McMurtry and coauthor Diana Ossana have a created a rich, entertaining, embellished myth.

In his 20th novel [Zeke and Ned]—written in collaboration with Diana Ossana—Larry McMurtry gives us the characters of Zeke Proctor, a part-Cherokee farmer, husband and father, and his younger friend, Ned Christie, a full-blooded Cherokee now homesteading, like Zeke and his family, in the Cherokee territory known today as Oklahoma. If they make a movie out of this book (and it's not unlikely they will), the role of the romantic male lead goes, unquestionably, to the character of Ned—a smart, devastatingly handsome, hardworking and loyal man whose prowess as a sharpshooter is celebrated throughout the Cherokee Nation even before the events of this novel unfold.

Both...