Award-winning New Mexico author Max Evans dies days before his 96th birthday

Max Evans, a New Mexico author who wrote “The Rounders” and “The Hi Lo Country,” has died.

Evans, author of more than two dozen works of fiction and nonfiction, including “The King of Taos,” a novel published this year by the University of New Mexico Press, died Wednesday in hospice care at Albuquerque’s Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center.

Survivors include Pat, his wife of 71 years, and their twin daughters, Sheryl and Charlotte.

Evans, an Albuquerque resident since 1967, would have been 96 on Saturday. He had been hospitalized since falling at home and breaking a hip on June 19.

Evans’ novel “The Rounders,” a riotous tale about two beat-up cowboys and a maniac-wild roan horse named Old Fooler, was made into a 1965 movie starring Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda. His 1961 novel “The Hi Lo Country,” the story of two hard-living, hell-raising cowboy pals who fall in love with the same woman, who also happens to be married, became a 1998 film with Woody Harrelson, Billy Crudup and Patricia Arquette in the leading roles.

In 1990, Evans was presented the Western Writers of America Saddleman Award for outstanding contributions to the American West, and in 2015, he was inducted into the WWA Hall of Fame.

He was the recipient of two WWA Spur Awards for excellence in Western writing and three literary awards presented by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

By Ollie Reed in the Albq. Journal.