Lonesome Dove was written in 1985 by Larry McMurtry. Its an 850 page Epic that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986. Its a classic western and one of my top books that I read this year so far.
The story is set in the 1870s and follows Gus and Call, ex-rangers who run a small cattle company in the Texas town of Lonesome Dove. After learning that the state of Montana is basically a cattlemans paradise, with lush green fields and uninhabited land, they hatch a plan to be the first cattle farm in the state. They commandeer a massive herd of cattle and start their run from Texas to Montana. With them is a band of young and old cattle hands, a cook, a piano player, and a few other characters that we are introduced to and get to know along the way. There is also Jake Spoon a fellow ex-ranger, gambler, and ladies man and Lorena, the towns young prostitute whom nearly every man in the book is in love with. Lorena desperately wants to get to San Francisco and tags a long with the crew, much to some of their behest.
The book is a character driven story that also contains a lot of exciting plot points throughout that are both entertaining and thrilling. I found it to be a page turner myself that kept bringing me back again and again. I found even the lulls in the story to be interesting and I really couldn't wait to find out what would happen next.
It took me about three weeks to finish this one, because it is quite long. I originally set a goal to finish it in six weeks, but I reduced that to four when I realized that I was averaging about 200 pages a week. By the last two weeks I was reading about 250 pages, so I was actually able to finish it early on week three.
It used to take me a long time to read even a modest sized book, but this year I've been prioritizing reading and have increased my speed pretty significantly. I've been watching a lot less TV lately as well, which has had a huge impact. Summertime TV has been lacking for me, so instead of being bored watching a mediocre show that I'm not interested in, I've instead switched over to books.
After finishing Lonesome Dove I immediately sought out the other three books in the series quartet. I was lucky to find them all online in hardcover. It irks me a little that the book art of Lonesome Dove is slightly more modern then the other books, its a newer print, and it doesn't have the same sort of look and vibe to it. But I've got the whole series now, so thats the main thing.
Streets of Laredo is a direct sequel to Lonesome Dove and Deadmans Walk and Comanche Moon are prequels set in the previous two decades before the main story. The prequel books follow Gus and Call during their rangering days. So some of the characters will be different (I'm guessing) and I'm envisioning it to be a classic "Cowboys and Indians" sort of tale. We'll see when I read it.
Overall I thought that Lonesome Dove was a great American classic that's full of Romance and adventure. Its one that I would definitely recommend reading. I gave it 5 stars.
