Lonesome Dove – I finished it!

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove was pitched to me as Stephen King’s favorite book. Lonesome Dove is a book that Booktalk and Bookstagram can’t get enough of. And, because I rarely read westerns, I had a hard time getting into the book.

A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

First off, I remember there being a miniseries, and another miniseries related to the book. Because I didn’t read the book (yes, even as a younger version of myself I wanted to read the book first), and because my parents were also into Little House on the Prairie and Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman, I did not watch the show. Don’t get me wrong, I read the Prairie books (and the autobiographies), I’ve been to a few of the sites of the Ingalls history, I’ve been to Wall Drug and Tombstone. I’ve been to the town of Calico a few times. But it was just not my thing. Heck, I even had a hard time reading The Gunslinger and it was more fantasy than western.

To prep myself last year, I read Larry McMurtry’s Houston series. This series has Terms of Endearment and The Evening Star in it, as well as some other books. And while I could enjoy his style contemporarily, I wasn’t sure if I could read it. I even talked a relative into reading it (spoiler: he stopped around 40 percent because it was boring).

I finally decided I needed to read it. And I’m happy I read it because it’s something I can cross off my list. But I’m also a little bit conflicted by it. I read Hamnet last year, and between that and James, I couldn’t tell you which struck me more. But either of those books struck me more than Lonesome Dove did. And that isn’t McMurtry’s fault. I liked the writing, and I enjoyed some bits of the book more than others. However, the real action of the story doesn’t take place until the drive. That’s about 30 percent or so into the book when you really start seeing stuff. For me, I like a book to have something happen (act one) around the first 15-20 percent. That’s a personal thing.

I really felt for some of the characters, and I think I’m going to watch the move, even if it’s a few decades old. There has to be a reason why it’s been so popular. McMurtry writes men with care, and he can write a good villain, and a multifaceted hero (meaning they are a hero in one sense, but may have failed in another sense)–which is something I really value. There are no perfect characters, and perhaps that is McMurtry’s true genius.

I spoke with that same relative (who reads a lot of KU westerns, by the way) and confirmed that while they may have grown up in the west, and wagon trains and railroads trips were a thing, my people didn’t get out west really until the last generation. Both sides of my parentage set out west in the 60s. While they did it differently, there were no wagon trains or forced marriages.

I also think that reading Beverly Jenkins’ books have changed what I enjoy reading. I like her well plotted and researched books, and even some of those have a western component I was not expecting.

Did I like Lonesome Dove? Yes, it was a 3.75-4/5 stars. I like that I started out the year with a big, chonky book and hope to continue the trend this year. However, I will say that there were books I like more from this author, as well as books set in this region by different authors I like better.

Have you read Lonesome Dove? What do you think?