After watching Paramount’s Lawmen: Bass Reeves and seeing in the opening credits that it was based on two books in a historical fiction trilogy written by Sidney Thompson, I had to hunt them down and dig into this historical personage that no one seems to know about.

Over the course of three novels, Thompson documents the life of Bass Reeves, from being born into slavery in 1838 to his death from Bright’s Disease in the early days of 1910. What Thompson does is take the historical record, and flesh it out, bringing to life the incredible story of a devout and religious man who rose to fame as a U.S. Deputy Marshal who worked predominantly in the Indian Territory.

Thompson’s rendering of Reeves brings him and the world he lived to vivid life. The first book, Follow the Angels Follow the Doves takes us through Reeves’ childhood, his treatment as a slave, the brutality of his master, his skills with a gun, to his service, in the Confederacy (his master’s side) in the Civil War, and how he won his subsequent freedom.

The second novel, Hell on the Border, which is the major basis of the Paramount+ series, covers Reeves’ time as a U.S. Deputy Marshal. It brushes up against some of his biggest cases, some of the most renowned moments, culminating in his arrest for killing his party’s cook.

The third and final story, The Forsaken and the Dead, guides us through more of Reeves’ work, the manhunt for his own son, who committed murder, the loss of his wife, and friends to the ravages of time and disease, and his twilight years as a police officer in Muskogee.

The details that Thompson layers into the narrative recreate a time that most of us have only seen on film or in books, but never with quite the everyday reality that Thompson’s pages deliver. Over the course of the trilogy, I could feel the trail dust, the bite of the cold nights, the pain and horror over the treatment of people based on the colour of their skin, and the terror and panic of the shoot-outs, and the faith of a man dedicated to his belief in a higher power and the concepts of justice.

While I may enjoy a good Western film or series, I’ve never read a novel, even a historical one, set in that genre and Sidney Thompson with his fantastic rendering of the life of Bass Reeves has set a very high bar for my next Western read.

If you’re looking for something to explore, a corner of history you may not be aware of, The Bass Reeves Trilogy is definitely something to discover!