Matt Braun is leading the life he always dreamed of ~ the writer's life. "I can't imagine not being a writer," he says. "That was my goal ~ my only goal ~ from an early age. Through the understanding of my wife, a bulldog of an agent, and a love of the written word, all those early dreams came true. I am the most fortunate of men." 

He is highly successful as one of the country's most prominent western writers, with 45 published novels and books including 40,000,000 copies in print worldwide. 

It's only natural Braun would grow up to write about the West. A native of Oklahoma, he hails from a long line of ranchers. His Matt great-grandfather founded a ranch near Sweetwater,  Oklahoma, and once survived a shootout with three horse thieves. Still, another ancestor was one of the foremost ranchers in Texas. John Adair, a landed Irish aristocrat from county Donegal, who came to America seeking investment opportunities. 

In 1876, Adair went into partnership with Charles Goodnight and founded the JA Ranch. Goodnight was already a legendary cattleman, having blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail from Texas to Wyoming. With Adair's business acumen and Goodnight's cow savvy, the outfit was established in the Palo Duro Canyon, deep in the Texas Panhandle. By 1880, the partners controlled 1,000,000 acres of land and more than 100,000 cows wearing the JA brand. 

As a fourth-generation westerner, Braun is steeped in the tradition and lore of the frontier era. His books reflect a heritage rich with the truth of that bygone time.  

During his youth, he also acquired a respect for the Native American culture, having been reared among the Cherokee and Osage tribes. He learned their traditions and culture. Their philosophy regarding the right of each man to walk his own path became the foundation of Braun's own beliefs. 

Like his ancestors, Braun has spent the majority of his life wandering the mountains and plains of the West. He has always felt more comfortable in a wilderness setting, and his books display a remarkable understanding of frontiersmen. 

He writes of a West where a hardy breed of individualists challenged Braun and conquered a raw and hostile land. Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, said of his work, "Matt Braun has a genius for taking real characters out of the Old West and giving them flesh-and-blood immediacy." 

Braun believes today's readers are still fascinated with the Old West because "any novel set in the Old West represents a legendary time in our national consciousness. In the 1860s, the United States was not yet a hundred years old. America had no mythology of its own, no fabled characters such as Beowulf and Roland. So we invented a cast of mythical creatures, the cowboys and gunfighters and plainsmen of the western frontier. 

"We combined the King Arthur legends with the medieval morality plays, adding the chivalric code of the Old West into the mix, and called it a 'western.' All in a matter of years, we created the literature of our newly invented mythology."   

Braun says, 'Nowhere in history have mythical figures achieved such widespread appeal. Few people today would recall Beowulf met a valorous death while slaying the evil dragon. But people around the world, from Germany to Japan, can relate the story of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. 

"The myth of the Old West encompasses knaves and rascals as well as stalwart knights attired in buckskins. Nothing before or since has captured the imagination of a global audience. The Old West endures as a place of legend, a time of legendary feats." 

Oklahoma has been the setting for several of Braun's works, including Outlaw Kingdom, The Kincaids, and One Last Town, which was made into a TNT movie, You Know My Name, starring Sam Elliott. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum hosted the premiere for the movie in August 1999, in cooperation  with TNT. 

Of the Outlaw Kingdom, noted Elmer Kelton said, "Matt Braun brings back the flavor of early Oklahoma and the grit of the men who brought law to an outlaw territory. He is a master storyteller of frontier history." Terry Johnston, author of the Plainsmen series, said, "In Outlaw Kingdom, I once again see the unique talent that placed Matt Braun head- and-shoulders above all the rest who would attempt to bring the gunmen of the Old West to life. In place of the laconic, two-dimensional gunslinger of Hollywood and so much pulp fiction today, Braun has given us his Bill Tilghman - a man of flesh and bone, blood and sinew, a man we can see ourselves joining as he walks down those dusty streets of Oklahoma Territory."

Tilghman, the frontier lawman, is also the subject of One Last Town, a story about Cromwell, Oklahoma, a lusty oil boom town of shacks, tents, brothels, bars, and gamblers. It was 48 Persimmon Hill Spring 2001 called a "wicked town" by many and it was Tilghman's job to enforce what little law there was. 

Tilghman died November 1, 1924, trying to protect Cromwell from itself. As quickly as the town rose to fame and a population that swelled from 3,000 to 10,000 from 1923 to 1925, it passed into obscurity. Today its population is 300 - tops. 

What drew Braun to write about Tilghman? Braun says, the book and the movie evolved from his Oklahoma roots. He called Tilghman "the most revered lawman of modern Oklahoma. He devoted most of his life to law enforcement, and in large degree, he is the prototype for the lawman/gunfighter of western myth. He was, without question, the finest lawman ever to wear a badge. 

"Bat Masterson said of Bill Tilghman, 'He was the best of us all.' He was everything you would want in a hero. His sense of justice and fairness separated him from all the other lawmen like night and day. I wrote the novel to honor the man," Braun said. 

But it is his novel The Kincaids, that is his favorite. It tells the generational story of the settlement and statehood of Oklahoma, spanning the decades from the buffalo-dotted plains of Kansas to the spiked, oil- rich horizons of Oklahoma in the 1920s. Three generations of Kincaids live the saga of Jake Kincaid and the dynasty he established during one of the most turbulent eras in American history. 

Braun said it was also the 'most challenging" novel he has written. "I wanted to craft a novel that someone would check out of a library 50 years from now, and after reading it, say, 'Yeah, that's how it really happened in the old Oklahoma Territory.'" 

In many ways, the book was also a tribute to Braun's ancestors, some of whom actually lived the tale. 

His efforts were rewarded with a Spur Award for "Best Historical Novel" from Western Writers of America, and Oklahoma's former Governor, George Nigh, awarded him a lifetime appointment as an Oklahoma Territorial Marshal. 

In 1999, Braun was honored with the "Cowboy Spirit Award" by the National Festival of the West. He was the first writer to ever receive  the award, presented for his contribution to western literature. Braun has been called "America's authentic voice of the western frontier.' 

Although Braun lives today in a remote section of mountains on the East Coast, with his wife Bettiane, and their Yorkshire Terrier and a Rottweiler, he continues to travel the West, gathering source material for his novels. Since 1972, when his first novel, Black Fox, was published, to his newest work, Hickok & Cody, to be published in May, the writing life has truly nurtured Braun's creative spirit. 

After all the published words, the accolades from fellow writers, the awards, Braun continues to embrace his love affair with the written word. 

"Writing has allowed me a life of freedom and personal gratification," he says. "I spend my days with fascinating characters who take me on a journey through the grandest adventure of our national history. Every day is a revelation, and the people I travel with are the stuff of legend. I'm a lucky dog." 

Indeed.   

Spring 2001

M.J. Van Deventer is the Editor of Persimmon Hill and Director of Publications for the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.