Synopsis
Two former Texas Rangers, Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae, drive cattle from Texas to Montana with a crew of oddballs, misfits, and true heroes. With its roots firmly sunk in classic trail-drive lore, this novel nevertheless transcends the Western genre. Commenting on the book's phenomenal success, McMurtry said, "LONESOME DOVE was a critical book. But that's not how it was perceived. The romance of the West is so powerful, you can't really swim against the current. Whatever truth about the West is printed, the legend is always more potent." In 1987 the novel was adapted as a successful TV miniseries.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1985-05-01 | | Series: | Lonesome Dove Series |
| Size | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.8 in | | Thickness: | 2.2 in | | Weight: | 43.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
A love story and an epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last, defiant wilderness of America. Richly authentic, beautifully written, Lonesome Dove is a book to make readers laugh, weep, dream and remember. Now a blockbuster television event.
Industry Reviews
"You can easily believe that this is how it really was to be there, to live, to suffer and rejoice, then and there. And thus, the reader is most subtly led to see where the literary conventions of the Western came from, how they came to be in the first place, and which are true and which are false."
Chicago Tribune Books - George Garrett
"Everything about the book feels true; being anti-mythic is a great aid to accuracy about the lonely, ignorant, violent West....All of Mr. McMurtry's antimythic groundwork--his refusal to glorify the West--works to reinforce the strength of the traditionally mythic parts of 'Lonesome Dove', by making it far more credible than the old familiar horse operas. These are real people, and they are still larger than life."
New York Times Book Review - Nicholas Lehmann
"It's a pleasure...to be able to recommend a big popular novel that's amply imagined and crisply, lovingly written. I haven't enjoyed a book more this year."
Newsweek - Walter Clemons
"This could be the beginning of any number of western novels. All the standard elements are present. Turn the key, and the clockwork figures will start shooting, drinking, roping cows, whoring....It happens instead to be the start of one of the best westerns I have ever read. It certainly is the best of Larry McMurtry's, and he has written good ones before."
Washington Post Book World - Noel Perrin
"The book's great length and leisurely pace convey the sense of a bygone era, while the author's attachment to misfits and backwaters never goes out of style....McMurtry knows exactly what he is doing in this sentimental epic. He is an uncommonly shrewd judge of book flesh."
Time - R. Z. Sheppard (06/10/1985)
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