Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (1985)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

                The best way I can describe this book is to call it an epic journey. I don’t have much practice reading Westerns but this book was pretty damn good. It was published in 1985 and won the Pulitzer in 1986. I honestly can’t say I would have come anywhere near it if it hadn’t been for this year’s theme of reading a book from each year since I’ve been alive. (I was born in 1986 so this will serve as the introduction into my journey!) While researching I found the blurb about the novel to be extremely vague and depended mostly upon the opinions of other reviewers when deciding to pick this up. I thought to myself why not give it a try if this is supposed to be one of the best Westerns ever written. This was well worth the read for the journey back to a time when cowboys still dreamed of distant lands.

                Lonesome Dove examines and focuses on the lives of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, two Texas Rangers that for years patrolled Texas as men of the law before finally settling down in the town of Lonesome Dove. They ran a livery in the small town and still did some rangering throughout the state. When they are visited by their old friend Jack Spoon, who brought with him stories of Montana and the possibilities of unsettled land, Call decides it’s time for a change and convinces McCrae they should start a cattle drive from Texas to Montana to open up the first cattle company. Though reluctant McCrae agrees and the adventure begins. And what an adventure it is. My one complaint with this novel, and it’s a huge one to me, is that this novel started off so slow. Not a lot goes on in Lonesome Dove. There is one saloon with one whore, barbershops and not much else. It isn’t until the guys hire some help and hit the road that I really became invested in the story. I had been about a hundred pages in at that point in what is an over 800 page novel. I was beginning to like some of the characters but it was unclear where the story was going yet. Once McMurtry got the guys on the road everything changed and the story truly began.

                So what makes this novel well worth the read regardless of the slow start? The writing beyond a doubt. This novel has everything you want. The plot was developed and intertwined beautifully. All of the characters were well imagined, well thought out and well developed. The world was fully developed and the perils obvious on every page. And I had no idea what would happen next. I have never imagined what life would be like for a cowboy making his was across the country after the Civil War but McMurtry made everything feel real. I was intrigued, scared, excited, wary, and other various emotions throughout the book. The scope of the cattle drive and the dangers associated with it, along with the uncertainty, was never lost on me. This was just really well done. I’m giving this 4 out of 5 stars because the beginning really dig drag for me but this is definitely a novel I can and will recommend.