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In a momentary lapse of self-control, I picked up my copy of Lonesome Dove and got lost once more in the wonder that is Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call and all the assorted characters that people their world. If anyone ever asked me if I had been to Montana, I would have to say “yes��, and every step of land between the Milk River and Lonesome Dove, Texas. Never has a story felt more real, been more packed with personalities, more genuine in its depiction of place, or more perfectly told.

Even the characters you do not admire, you sadly understand. When McMurtry says of Elmira Johnson:

She wanted July and Joe to be gone, suddenly, so she would not have to deal with them every day. Their needs were modest enough, but she no longer wanted to face them. She had reached a point where doing anything for anyone was a strain. It was like heavy work, it was so hard.

you momentarily understand what drives her. She is living a life she does not want in being a wife and mother, and the attempt to do that is a burden she can no longer carry. It doesn’t matter that her life is not a bad life, what matters is that it is not, any longer, “her�� life.

In fact, this book might mostly be about people seeking, often to their own detriment, the lives they have lost. Each of them has an ideal in their head that they are chasing: Call has Montana; Gus has Clara; Lorie has San Francisco; Ellie has Dee Boot; Clara has the idea of a son, all yearnings based on losses they have already experienced.

The book is peppered with wit and humor, and with wisdom. Even in its tragic moments, Gus is able to infuse both of those elements into the situation. He gives advice in such a folksy, off-hand, manner, but the truth lying beneath his observations is never lost on the reader.

Life in San Francisco is still just life. If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk--and feisty gentlemen.

This is the fastest 900 page novel you will ever read. It never slows or hits patches that you want to speed through. You feel the elements in the descriptions of the weather, the weight of the losses, the constant danger of just living in this place and time; but you never want it to stop. You want to travel beyond the next river, scrape off the mud, and then cross another plain or find another grassland. You want to sleep in the saddle because you are exhausted and then share a plate of Bol’s beans or Po Campo’s fried grasshoppers.

If there was ever a versatile writer, it was Larry McMurtry. This is far from being the only magnificent novel he produced, but it is far and away his best. It is iconic and unparalleled in its scope and its accomplishment. If you like character driven novels of epic proportions, but you’re thinking you don’t like “westerns��, don’t miss this remarkable book. It is a masterpiece that happens to be set in the West and deals with so much more than a simple review, like this one, can ever express.