Reading Order
Streets of Laredo Reading Order
Streets of Laredo (1993) by Larry McMurtry is the direct sequel to Lonesome Dove — set about 20 years after the events of the original novel, with Woodrow Call now in his 70s, working as a bounty hunter hired to pursue Joey Garza, a teenage Mexican outlaw who has been robbing trains along the Rio Grande with inhuman efficiency. Where Lonesome Dove is an adventure novel with elegiac overtones, Streets of Laredo is an elegy with action — the book in which McMurtry explicitly mourns the West's passing and the generation of men who defined it. Streets of Laredo is the darkest of the Lonesome Dove Quartet — Gus McCrae is long dead (the most painful absence in the novel, and in the series), the West is visibly closing, and Call himself is diminished: physically reduced by his injuries and his age, emotionally closed in a way he never fully was in Lonesome Dove, and pursuing a quarry who is not a romantic outlaw but a cold, efficient killer of a new kind. The novel introduces new characters — Lorena (from Lonesome Dove) now a schoolteacher and married with children, Billy Williams the bandit's son, and Brookshire the Eastern railroad man — but its emotional center is the world that is ending and the old man who cannot stop moving even as that world closes around him.
Where to start
Streets of Laredo — read Lonesome Dove first. The sequel's emotional weight depends entirely on knowing Lonesome Dove and knowing that Gus is dead; without that context, Streets of Laredo is a Western novel; with it, it is an elegy.
Complete Streets of Laredo Book List
- 1Buy
Streets of Laredo
Larry McMurtry·1993·The novel — Captain Call in his 70s, pursuing the teenage outlaw Joey Garza across the Rio Grande; the Lonesome Dove Quartet's direct sequel, set 20 years later; McMurtry's darkest Western and his most explicit elegy for the frontier. - 2Buy
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry·1985·The essential predecessor — the Pulitzer Prize-winning original; the entire emotional weight of Streets of Laredo depends on having experienced Lonesome Dove; Call and Gus's relationship, Gus's death, the cattle drive that defined both their lives. - 3Buy
Dead Man's Walk
Larry McMurtry·1995·The Lonesome Dove Quartet's prequel — Gus and Call as young Texas Rangers; the companion in seeing the full arc of both characters from young men to old age. - 4Buy
Comanche Moon
Larry McMurtry·1997·The Lonesome Dove Quartet's second prequel — Gus and Call in middle age; the companion in the quartet's complete portrait of the two Rangers across their lives. - 5Buy
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy·2005·McCarthy's most accessible major novel — the companion in American fiction about an aging lawman who can no longer face what the world has become; Bell is the literary companion to Call, both old men whose world has moved past what their moral framework can accommodate. - 6Buy
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy·1992·McCarthy's National Book Award-winning Western — the companion in the American Western literary tradition; the same Texas/Mexico border world, treated with McCarthy's more literary technique, is the serious literary companion to McMurtry's popular epic. - 7Buy
True Grit
Charles Portis·1968·Portis's great comic Western — the companion in the revisionist Western tradition; Cogburn's old age and physical decline (seen in the prequel Mattie's adult perspective) is the comic version of what Call's decline represents in Streets of Laredo. - 8Buy
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy·1985·McCarthy's masterpiece — the essential companion in the Western tradition; the border violence of Blood Meridian is the historical truth that Streets of Laredo's more elegiac Western is mourning the passing of.
Streets of Laredo — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Streets of Laredo about?
Streets of Laredo is set approximately 20 years after Lonesome Dove, in the 1890s. Call is now in his 70s, still working as a bounty hunter, and has been hired by a railroad company to capture or kill Joey Garza — a 16-year-old Mexican boy who has been robbing trains along the Rio Grande with a long-range rifle and who kills with an efficiency and coldness that is unlike any outlaw Call has encountered. The pursuit takes Call into the Rio Grande country — harsh, hostile, and swarming with Mexican outlaws and bandits — and forces him to confront not only the physical diminishment of old age (he loses a leg and a hand) but the moral diminishment of a world in which the things he was good at no longer matter.
How does the absence of Gus affect Streets of Laredo?
Gus McCrae's absence is the most important thing about Streets of Laredo — he has been dead since Lonesome Dove, and his absence from Streets of Laredo is felt on every page. Where Call and Gus's dynamic in Lonesome Dove — Call's taciturnity and Gus's garrulousness, Call's driven purposefulness and Gus's philosophical acceptance — was the emotional and comic engine of the original novel, Streets of Laredo has no comic engine, because there is no Gus to provide it. Call without Gus is a man who has never been good at language or feeling trying to manage an old age in which he is alone, physically diminished, and in a world that has no use for him. The novel is not a failed sequel; the absence of Gus is precisely the point.
Who is Joey Garza and what does he represent?
Joey Garza is a 16-year-old Mexican boy who kills with a long-range rifle from distances that no one in the 1890s border country can match. He is cold, efficient, without conscience or romance — not the outlaw of Western mythology (violent but relatable, operating by a code) but something newer and more purely dangerous. Joey represents the kind of violence that replaces the violence Call has known: not the frontier violence of the old West (intimate, personal, organized around codes of courage and honor) but the impersonal, long-range violence of modernity. Call cannot understand Joey, cannot anticipate him, and cannot catch him by the methods that worked against the outlaws of Lonesome Dove. Joey is the future's violence, and Call's inability to face it is the novel's central argument.
What are the Lonesome Dove Quartet's other volumes?
The Lonesome Dove Quartet consists of four novels: Lonesome Dove (1985), Streets of Laredo (1993), Dead Man's Walk (1995), and Comanche Moon (1997). Streets of Laredo is a direct sequel; Dead Man's Walk and Comanche Moon are prequels showing Gus and Call as young and middle-aged Texas Rangers. The recommended reading order is either chronological (Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo) or McMurtry's publication order (Lonesome Dove first, then Streets of Laredo, then the prequels); most readers begin with Lonesome Dove regardless of publication order.
What should I read after Streets of Laredo?
After Streets of Laredo, Dead Man's Walk (1995) and Comanche Moon (1997) are the Lonesome Dove prequels. For the American Western tradition, Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men is the most important literary companion — Bell and Call are parallel figures in American fiction about aging lawmen whose world has moved past their understanding. For the elegiac Western tradition, Charles Portis's True Grit and Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses are important companions.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.