Revisit a Western Masterpiece -- and the Audio is Pitch Perfect!

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even better than before, completely believable, and once you get into it you can't put it down.  This is McMurty's masterpiece, and it a masterpiece of the west, but even bigger than that.  If you haven't read it in a while, pick it up, you'll be surprised.  (The audio version is just tops, you forget that you are being read to and believe you are hearing these folks in real life.)  If you have never read it, read it.  I am fearful that books like these won't ever be written again for two reasons, which really boils down to one reason in the end: pure economics.  First, we -- the readers, are afraid of long books.  We just won't pick them up anymore.  I know it is certainly a struggle for me, but then I am never sorry when I do so I still do it.  Second, due to the first, publishers won't pick them up either.  What a loss!  But at least we have this book.

Lonesome Dove is about men and women that are so believable, wonderful and flawed and normal, good and bad and in between.  Captains Augustus McCray and Woodrow Call own a "ranch" down in South Texas.  Because of their former partner, Jake Spoon, they go on a cattle drive, in order to be the first cowboys to take cattle into Montana.  So many things happen that hinge on Jake Spoon's actions, so many lives changed, but this was life back then, and it is life as I have experienced it.  Lonesome Dove gives you all that you would expect from a cattle drive, but so much more.  You care about the women and the men, and even the animals that are a part of the story.  You laugh and you cry. And you finish it and wonder at the fact that these are the people that you have known and loved in Texas, they are still here and living.


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