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"When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake ---
not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade
when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its
rattling days were over. The sow had it by the neck, and the shoat had the
tail."
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is for lovers of Westerns and also for readers of
contemporary fiction who believe they could never really enjoy a Western. Who,
after all, could resist a tale that begins with pigs eating a rattlesnake?
With LONESOME DOVE --- the sprawling saga which spawned an excellent television
miniseries, two prequels, and a sequel --- Larry McMurtry proves that a true storyteller
is not bound by genre, geography, or time period.
This is the unforgettable story of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, two former Texas Rangers
who are now partners in the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium near Lonesome
Dove, Texas. Their quiet days of semi-retirement are over when they're enlisted
to drive a massive herd of cattle from Texas to Montana; their adventure is just
beginning.
Larry McMurtry is a rare writer in that he paints the American West as it really was ---
dirty, unruly, untamed, cruel, life threatening, and sometimes mind-numbingly bleak ---
without losing his sense of the absurd. In LONESOME DOVE he manages to tell a
love story without romanticizing and presents us with the gift of an adventure story that
is epic in scale without being so overwhelming that it strains credulity.
Lorena, the whore whom Gus loves; Clara, the love of his life who now lives with her
family in lonely Montana; Elmira, the runaway wife of July Johnson, Arkansas sheriff and
small-time hero; Newt, the young son of a whore who once loved Call; Bolivar, erstwhile
bandit and argumentative cook; Pea Eye and Deets, eccentric partners at the Hat Creek
Cattle Company . . . these are just a few of the seemingly endless cast of characters to
be found in LONESOME DOVE. Unique, heroic, larger than life and perfect in the
quirky details, all these characters will resound in your memory long after you've
reluctantly closed this 900-plus page delight.
LONESOME DOVE is a joy to read from start to finish.
--- Reviewed by Jami Edwards
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