It Made a Great Movie

When does 945 pages take no time at all? When you're reading Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.

From the beginning, McMurtry entertains, amuses, and astonishes the reader with his simplistic and honest view of an era more complicated than it seemed. Every hardship possible falls on this fictional group of characters.

All the characters are depicted so realistically and completely, that one cay say, "I know someone just like that!" The two main characters are Gus, the gregarious, affectionate partner, and Call, a stern, standoffish loner. What Call lacks in communication, Gus more than makes up for with his continuous flow of talk. What Gus lacks in motivation, Call provides as perseverance and direction.

Gus and Call, two retired Texas Rangers, embark on this adventure across the United States, seeking greener pastures as told to them by friend Jake. As their lives had been sedentary of late, they set out, for no other reason than to do something no man had ever done before--take cattle to Montana. These two, teamed with an assorted cast of misfit cowboys, take the reader on one of the roughest journeys imaginable--a cattle drive from southern Texas to Montana.

Every disaster imaginable happens along the way. Hail storms, Indian kidnapping, drought, snow, horse thieves, wind storms, and of course, stampeding cattle, all provide challenges for the Hat Creek Outfit, some of them not much more than boys.

Each character has a dream he or she aspires to, but few come true. Gus wants to be reunited with his old girlfriend, Jake wants to become rich, Lorena wants to go to San Francisco, Dish wants Lorena, Newt would like to find out who his real father is, and Call would mostly like to get his herd to Montana before winter. Many other characters and their dreams are involved, seemingly unrelated, but tied together later on. Some succeed and some don't. And some never make it to Montana.

Everything along the way, from the dryness of the plains, to the bantering of the cowpokes, is described so cleverly and at times facetiously, that the reader can easily adjust to the moods and imagery created by the author.

Events move quickly and disasters are never dwelled on for long--the team just picks up and moves along--right until the last page.