Ratings109
Average rating4.7
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry, the author of Terms of Endearment, is his long-awaited masterpiece, the major noel at last of the American West as it really was.
A love story, an adventure, an American epic, Lonesome Dove embraces all the West--legend and fact, heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers--in a novel that recreates the Central American experience, the most enduring of our national myths.
Set in the late nineteenth century. Lonesome Dove is the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana -- and much more. It is a drive that represents for everybody involved not only a Darin, even a foolhardy, adventure, but a part of the American Dream--the attempt to carve out of the last remaining wilderness a new life.
Augustus McCrae and W. F. Call are former Texas Rangers, partners and friends who have shared hardship and danger together without ever quite understanding (or wanting to understand) each other's deepest emotions. Gus is the romantic, a reluctant rancher who has a way with women and the sense to leave well enough alone. Call is a driven, demanding man, a natural authority figure with no patience for weakness, and not many of his own. He is obsessed with the dream of creating his own empire, and with the need to conceal a secret sorrow of his own. The two men could hardly be more different, but both are tough, redoubtable fighters who have learned to count on each other, if nothing else.
Call's dream not only drags Gus along in its wake, but draws in a vast cast of characters:
-Lorena, the whore with the proverbial heart of gold, whom Gus (and almost everyone else) loves, and who. Survives one of the most terrifying experiences any woman could have...
-Elmira, the restless, reluctant wife of a small-time Arkansas sheriff, who runs away from the security of marriage to become part of the great Western adventure...
--Blue Duck, the sinister Indian renegade, one of the most frightening villains in American fiction, whose steely capacity for cruelty affects the lives of everyone in the book...
-Newt, the young cowboy for whom the long and dangerous journey from Texas to Montana is in fact a search for his own identity...
-Jake, the dashing, womanising ex-ranger, a comrade-in-arms of Gus and Call, whose weakness leads him to an unexpected fate...
-July Johnson, husband of Elmira, whose love for her draws him out of his secure life into a kind of hero...
Lonesome Dove seeps from the Rio Grande (where Gus and Call acquire the cattle for their long drive by raiding the Mexicans) to the Montana highlands (where they find themselves besieged by the last, defiant remnants of an older West).
It is an epic of love, heroism, loyalty, honour, and betrayal--faultlessly written, unfailingly dramatic. Lonesome Dove is the novel about the West that American literature--and the American reader--has long been waiting for.
--jacket
Series
4 primary booksLonesome Dove is a 4-book series with 4 primary works first released in 1985 with contributions by Larry McMurtry.
Series
7 primary booksFrontera is a 7-book series with 7 primary works first released in 1947 with contributions by Dorothy M. Johnson, Vardis Fisher, and 5 others.
Reviews with the most likes.
One of the best pieces of media I've ever come across and it beat Steel Ball Run as my favorite western.
Character is the name of this book.
I'm having trouble with the book. Perhaps I should not read the two prequels first, but I'm about halfway through, and I'm finding it unbelievably tedious. I stopped, left it a week, and then read some more, but it's not working for me.
I'm going to park it here and try again later in the year. I don't like leaving books unfinished.
I loved this book, but fuck me it was dark.
Pathos (/ˈpeɪθɒs/, US: /ˈpeɪθoʊs/; pl. pathea or pathê; Ancient Greek: πάθος, romanized: páthos, lit. 'suffering or experience') appeals to the emotions and ideals of the audience and elicits feelings that already reside in them.[1] Pathos is a term used most often in rhetoric (in which it is considered one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside ethos and logos), as well as in literature, film and other narrative art.
Read this every time I do a cross-country road trip. First time was in 1985.
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2,097 booksWhen you think back on every book you've ever read, what are some of your favorites? These can be from any time of your life – books that resonated with you as a kid, ones that shaped your personal...