Lonesome Dove [Hardcover]

Larry McMurtry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 13, 1985

Set in the late 19th century, Lonesome Dove is an adventurous story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. The narrative centers around two friends: Augustus McCrae, a reluctant rancher who has a way with women, and W. F. Call, whose talent for leadership conceals a secret sorrow. For Gus, Call, and the others who join the journey, the cattle drive is not only a daring and, perhaps, foolhardy endeavor, it comes to represent American dreams of the West.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Larry McMurtry, in books like The Last Picture Show, has depicted the modern degeneration of the myth of the American West. The subject of Lonesome Dove, cowboys herding cattle on a great trail-drive, seems like the very stuff of that cliched myth, but McMurtry bravely tackles the task of creating meaningful literature out of it. At first the novel seems the kind of anti-mythic, anti-heroic story one might expect: the main protagonists are a drunken and inarticulate pair of former Texas Rangers turned horse rustlers. Yet when the trail begins, the story picks up an energy and a drive that makes heroes of these men. Their mission may be historically insignificant, or pointless--McMurtry is smart enough to address both possibilities--but there is an undoubted valor in their lives. The result is a historically aware, intelligent, romantic novel of the mythic west that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Review

“If you read only one western novel in your life, read Lonesome Dove.”—USA Today

“Everything about Lonesome Dove feels true . . . These are real people, and they are still larger than life.”—Nicholas Lemann, The New York Times Book Review

“Lonesome Dove is Larry McMurtry’s loftiest novel."—Los Angeles Times

"A marvelous novel . . . moves with joyous energy . . . amply imagined and crisply, lovingly written. I haven't enjoyed a book more this year . . . a joyous epic."--Newsweek

"The finest novel that McMurtry has yet accomplished . . . Lonesome Dove has all the action anyone could possibly imagine . . . [and] both in general and in details, the authority of exact authenticity . . . superb."--Chicago Tribune --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 843 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (June 13, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671504207
• ISBN-13: 978-0671504205
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (475 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Academy Award. His most recent novel, When the Light Goes, is available from Simon & Schuster. He lives in Archer City, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

123 of 137 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One word: magnificent, November 9, 2002

By 

Candace Scott (Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lonesome Dove (Mass Market Paperback)

I have never been a fan of the literary western genre and confess that I read this book solely because I watched the movie based upon this book. Incredibly, the book supercedes the movie and McMurtry's characterization of Woodrow and Gus are truly stunning. It's the characters that turn this book into a compelling classic, rarely does the reader encounter such deftly-drawn and intriguing men as McCall and McCrae. You feel as if you are in Lonesome Dove with these men, and with them every step of the way from Texas to Montana. It's a magnificent journey and McMurtry is a superlative writer.

Even if you've never read a western book in your life, this is a literary masterpiece, the Shakespeare of the range, so to speak.

98 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tolstoy on the Range, August 21, 2000

By 

Ted Ficklen (Saint Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lonesome Dove (Mass Market Paperback)

Stay with me here. I'm serious. I think Lonesome Dove can standcomparison to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Of course, I've only read Tolstoy in translation, so chances are I've missed alot, but there is no question that McMurtry creates something here very close to that impossible dream: The Great American Novel. I dont know that any other American writer has ever suceeded on this scale, which is why I go to Tolstoy.

McMurtry uses the Western as a starting point, but there is a little of everything here. Surely there has never been another American Western with so many varied characters, both men and and women. McMurtry juggles many different points of view, but manages to give each of his characters a unique voice. Most remarkable of all, I think, are the women in the book, who manage to escape the usual stereotypes of madonna or whore, even though many of them are, quite literally, prostitutes.

Lonesome Dove is written in a deceptively simple, unpretentious style. I've just finished reading it for the second time. Despite its length it is really a fast read, since it is one of those books that demands to be taken with you where ever you go until you are done.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic and Unforgetable Work of Western Fiction, October 1, 2004

By 

Jeffrey Morseburg (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lonesome Dove (Mass Market Paperback)

Lonesome Dove is a modern classic. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the popularity of this book, the acclaim it has received and the cult status it has achieved with readers has tended to overshadow some of Larry McMurtry's other work and the attention to this one book has even become tiresome to the curmudgeonly Texas author. However, as a frequent reader of the prolific writer's fiction, I can attest to the fact that it is McMurtry's finest book and the one that gave readers his most memorable characters - the talkative, colorful Gus McCrae and the taciturn, deliberate Woodrow Call - aging former Texas Rangers who run a down-at-the-heels ranch near the Mexican border that they subsidize with cattle stolen on nocturnal raids across the border. The novel is about an epic cattle drive all the way from southern Texas to Montana. This famous "long drive" was actually a rare occurrence in the historic west as the expansion of the railroad system made long cattle drives unnecessary. While most cowboys who lived in the era of the cattle drives - which were driven by economic necessity in the years following the Civil War when there was a large market for beef in the north than could only be filled by the millions of head of cattle that had been left to breed on Texas pastures during the long years of conflict - went on a drive or two from Texas to Kansas as a rite of passage, a drive from the southern border of the country to its northern extreme would have been truly epic. In Lonesome Dove the drovers experience and overcome rainstorms and stampedes, treacherous crossings of swollen rivers, disloyal comrades, raiding Indians and a deviant, sadistic half-breed killer who stalks the cowboys and their retinue. While the leading characters, cantankerous old comrades, are the center of the story, the secondary figures in the drama are also beautifully written - Newt, Call's young son who is struggling to become a man, Lorena, the tenderhearted and beautiful young "soiled dove" and Jake, the charming former Ranger undone by his appetites. In contrast to some of McMurtry's other works, while death is always an uninvited guest, the drama is also leavened by a good dose of humor, much of it coming from a pair of snake eating Blue Pigs who become the novel's comic relief. And, there are plenty of violent ends as the author does not mind sacrificing his men and women to the needs of the fast-advancing plot and giving his readers an emotional tug. While cowboy work was hot, dirty and low paying work, revisionists forget that there was a romantic beauty to life on horseback, long nights of comradeship and a pride that cowhands took in doing a difficult job well. Larry McMurtry understands the incredible history of the American West and with its desolate beauty, unabashed romanticism and moments of stark terror, Lonesome Dove is an elegy to the waning days of the open range when bold men and strong women tried to settle the Great Plains.