The Smiling Country is about a footloose puncher who finds out the hard way that cowboys don’t remain young forever and that the inevitable wear and tear of a rugged life forces changes and compromises on the willing and unwilling alike. – Elmer Kelton

Hewey Calloway did not know how old he was without stopping to figure, and that distracted his attention from matters of real importance.

Elmer Kelton introduced Texas cowboy Hewey Calloway, one of the most beloved characters in Western fiction, almost thirty years ago in The Good Old Boys. The novel was transformed into a memorable 1995 TV film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek.

Hewey returns in The Smiling Country. It is 1910 and his freewheeling life is coming to an end–the fences, trucks, and automobiles he hates are creeping in even to remote Alpine, in the smiling country of West Texas. When he is badly injured trying to break a renegade horse, Hewey sees the loneliness that awaits him, and regrets his decision to run away from the only woman he has ever loved, the schoolteacher Spring Renfro.