If you're talking about Westerns as a genre, you need to realize that it's the story that is important, the setting just happens to be in the American West of the late 19th to early 20th century. The general theme of good triumphing over evil permeates these, whether it's a rancher fighting to protect his family or a Texas Ranger pursuing a villain through the deserts of West Texas. The Zane Grey/Louis L'Amour books are typical, even stereotypical of these, but there are thousands of others. Might look at Larry McMurtry,
Lonesome Dove, and Elmer Kelton too. Not to mention countless movies, dime novels and the fiction of the newspapers of the era.
But... There are exceptions to this that have become more popular. The Clint Eastwood
Unforgiven characters for example, bad guys doing bad for dubiously good reasons against even worse men. Even John Wayne in
The Shootist, a bad guy who is just trying to finish his days at peace but with no real remorse or atonement for past deeds. More modern treatments have the American Indians as good guys, which would have never flown in the real days of the west.
Also keep in mind that reality was never anything like the movies. Most "shootouts" were either drunken brawls or ambushes. Nobody ever met on the streets at
High Noon. There were no fair fights and very few honest, or honorable, lawmen.
Might watch the movie
Stagecoach, a classic John Ford that put John Wayne in the starring role. Many of the actors and tradespeople on that movie actually lived the real Wild West and it shows. Heck, a young kid named Marion Morrison, who later took the stage name John Wayne, working in the movie industry back lots as a teenager, learned to handle a six shooter from one of the technical advisors to the industry, a guy named Wyatt Earp.
Keep in mind that the Western of yore might not sell in today's market. Strong female characters didn't exist then that can exist and do well today. Books which used to have derogatory versions of blacks and Native Americans are getting pulled from shelves and reading lists today. Even the nearly non-violent gunplay of
The Lone Ranger,
The Rifleman or
Have Gun Will Travel went South with the Sam Pekinpah
Wild Bunch overkill.
I'm not sure the traditional Western is even viable anymore, but some come out each year.
The Gunsmith series of stories is one that is still being published and
The Son is now a TV/Netflix series. It's not
Hondo, or
True Grit or
Riders of the Purple Sage, but it does have a similar, though more contemporary, appeal.
Good luck. It's a fun genre, usually with quick reads, and there's a lot of chance to weave history with fiction. Or fictionalize history.
Jeff