Blue Duck, the sinister Indian renegade, one of the most frightening villains in American fiction, whose steely capacity for cruelty affects the lives of everyone in the book.Elmira, the restless, reluctant wife of a small-time Arkansas sheriff, who runs away from the security of marriage to become part of the great Western adventure.

Lorena, the whore with the proverbial heart of gold, whom Gus (and almost everyone else) loves, and who survives one of the most terrifying experiences any woman could have.The two men could hardly be more different, but both are tough, redoubtable fighters who have learned to count on each other, if nothing else.Ĭall's dream not only drags Gus along in its wake, but draws in a vast cast of characters: He is obsessed with thedream of creating his own empire, and with the need to conceal a secret sorrow of his own. Call is a driven, demanding man, a natural authority figure with no patience for weaknesses, and not many of his own. Gus is the romantic, a reluctant rancher who has a way with women and the sense to leave well enough alone. Call are former Texas Rangers, partners and friends who have shared hardship and danger together without ever quite understanding (or wanting to understand) each other's deepest emotions. It is a drive that represents for everybody involved not only a daring, even a foolhardy, adventure, but a part of the American Dream - the attempt to carve out of the last remaining wilderness a new life.Īugustus McCrae and W. Set in the late nineteenth century, Lonesome Dove is the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana - and much more. Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry, the author of Terms of Endearment, is his long-awaited masterpiece, the major novel at last of the American West as it really was.Ī love story, an adventure, an American epic, Lonesome Dove embraces all the West - legend and fact, heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settiers - in a novel that recreates the central American experience, the most enduring of our national myths. Now, with an introduction by the author, Lonesome Dove is reprinted in an S&S Classic Edition. First published in 1985, Larry McMurtry's epic novel combined flawless writing with a storyline and setting that gripped the popular imagination, and ultimately resulted in a series of four novels and an Emmy-winning television miniseries. Bestselling winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize, Lonesome Dove is an American classic.

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