Reading Order
Lonesome Dove Reading Order
Lonesome Dove (1985) by Larry McMurtry is the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Western — the definitive American Western novel and arguably the greatest American popular novel of the late 20th century. Two retired Texas Rangers, Augustus 'Gus' McCrae and Woodrow F. Call, lead a cattle drive from the tiny Texas border town of Lonesome Dove to the open range of Montana, a journey that takes them through Indian Territory, across the great plains, and into the wild country of Wyoming and Montana. The novel follows not just the two old friends but the dozens of people who join the drive or encounter it: the cowboys Jake Spoon and Dish Boggett, the prostitutes Elmira and Lorena, the young Texas cowhands, the buffalo hunter and the Hat Creek cowboys. Lonesome Dove is the rare novel that succeeds equally as a great popular novel and as a serious literary achievement. McMurtry was consciously working against the mythologies of the Western genre — John Wayne movies, the noble cowboy — and creating instead a Western that is realistic about the violence, monotony, loneliness, and moral complexity of life on the frontier. Gus McCrae is one of the greatest characters in American fiction: garrulous, philosophic, sentimental, brave, and capable of a tenderness that the Western genre does not usually accommodate. The novel was adapted into a landmark CBS miniseries in 1989 with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones that remains the definitive Western television production.
Where to start
Lonesome Dove — the Pocket Books or Simon & Schuster paperback. At over 900 pages it is a commitment, but most readers report that the pace accelerates and the final third is nearly impossible to put down. Begin with Lonesome Dove; the sequels and prequels can follow.
Complete Lonesome Dove Book List
- 1Buy
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry·1985·The novel — Gus McCrae and Call's cattle drive from Texas to Montana; the Pulitzer Prize-winning definitive American Western novel; the full cast of the drive and its aftermath across 900 pages. - 2Buy
Streets of Laredo
Larry McMurtry·1993·The Lonesome Dove Quartet's second volume (sequel to Lonesome Dove) — Call in old age, hunting a teenage Mexican outlaw; the darker companion to Lonesome Dove, McMurtry's elegiac portrait of the West's final days. - 3Buy
Dead Man's Walk
Larry McMurtry·1995·The Lonesome Dove Quartet's prequel — Gus and Call as young Texas Rangers on a disastrous expedition into New Mexico; the origin story of the characters whose history Lonesome Dove assumes. - 4Buy
Comanche Moon
Larry McMurtry·1997·The Lonesome Dove Quartet's second prequel — Gus and Call in middle age, in the years between Dead Man's Walk and Lonesome Dove; the full context for the old men of the main novel. - 5Buy
The Last Picture Show
Larry McMurtry·1966·McMurtry's breakout novel — the companion in his Texas mode; Anarene's dying small town is the earlier, contemporary Texas counterpart to the frontier Texas of the Lonesome Dove Quartet. - 6Buy
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy·1992·McCarthy's National Book Award-winning Border trilogy opener — the most important literary companion in the American Western tradition; John Grady Cole's Texas and Mexico are in the same landscape and tradition as the Lonesome Dove world, treated in a more literary register. - 7Buy
True Grit
Charles Portis·1968·Portis's great comic Western — the companion in the tradition of the realistic, revisionist Western; Mattie Ross's account of hunting Tom Chaney is the compact, comic, female-voiced version of what Lonesome Dove does at epic length with male protagonists. - 8Buy
Butcher's Crossing
John Williams·1960·Williams's Western — the companion in the tradition of the literary Western that demythologizes the frontier; the buffalo hunting expedition's violence and waste are the earlier version of what Lonesome Dove is doing — showing the frontier as it was rather than as the myth has it.
Lonesome Dove — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lonesome Dove about?
Lonesome Dove is the story of a cattle drive from the tiny Texas border town of Lonesome Dove to the open range of Montana, led by two retired Texas Rangers: Gus McCrae and Captain Woodrow F. Call. The drive is organized by Call, a driven, taciturn man who cannot leave anything undone, and Gus, his philosophical, garrulous, whiskey-loving partner. The novel follows the drive and its dozens of participants across more than 900 pages: the cowboys Jake Spoon (a charming failure) and Dish Boggett (a good man in love with the prostitute Lorena), Elmira (a prostitute who leaves with Jake and then leaves Jake for the brutal Buffalo hunter Big Zwey), the former slave and cook Bolivar, the young cowhands Newt and Lippy, and the array of people they encounter on the long drive north.
Why is Gus McCrae considered one of the greatest characters in American fiction?
Augustus 'Gus' McCrae is the emotional heart of Lonesome Dove — a man of genuine philosophical intelligence and genuine tenderness, qualities that the Western genre does not usually accommodate. Gus talks constantly, thinks about everything, and is sentimental in a way that is completely unself-conscious; he quotes Shakespeare and Byron, he loves women without possessing them, and he is capable of acts of great physical courage alongside acts of emotional openness that are usually reserved for domestic fiction. He is also funny — genuinely funny, in a way that is rare in serious fiction. McMurtry has said that Gus wrote himself, and the character has the quality of someone who exists beyond the boundaries of the book he is in.
Is Lonesome Dove historically accurate?
Lonesome Dove is historically accurate in its general outlines — cattle drives of this kind did happen, the Texas Rangers were real, the landscape is accurately described — but it is not a historical novel in the documentary sense. The characters are fictional (though some draw on historical figures), and the specific drive from Texas to Montana is invented. McMurtry's historical accuracy is most important at the level of atmosphere and social reality: the novel gets right the violence of the frontier (the Indian raids, the hanging of Jake Spoon, the random deaths on the trail), the isolation and monotony of trail life, and the moral complexity of the men and women who lived in this period. What Lonesome Dove corrects is the mythology — the John Wayne version of the West — rather than the historical record.
How does Lonesome Dove compare to the Western genre?
Lonesome Dove is both deeply within the Western genre and a conscious revision of it. McMurtry grew up in Texas and has said he was working against the mythologizing of the West — the John Wayne movies, the noble cowboy, the redemptive frontier — that he saw as falsifying what the West was actually like. His Western is realistic about violence (the deaths in Lonesome Dove are frequent and often random and meaningless), about the brutality of frontier life, about the loneliness and misogyny and racism that shaped the period, and about the fundamental sadness of the Western's ending: the frontier closes, the open range is fenced, the cowboys' way of life disappears. Lonesome Dove is the great Western because it simultaneously fulfills the genre's promise (the vast landscape, the adventure, the heroism) and refuses the genre's comfortable mythology.
What should I read after Lonesome Dove?
After Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo (1993) is the direct sequel, showing Call in old age in a darker, more elegiac register. Dead Man's Walk (1995) and Comanche Moon (1997) are the prequels, showing Gus and Call as young Rangers. For the literary Western tradition, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses and Charles Portis's True Grit are the most important companions. For earlier Western fiction, Owen Wister's The Virginian and Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop are the most important historical predecessors.
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