Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel turned 40 this year, and it’s easy to see why it endures. 

“Lonesome Dove” is the epic tale of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, anchored by two unforgettable characters: Augustus “Gus” McCrae, a whiskey-soaked romantic with a way with words, and Woodrow Call, his taciturn partner whose loyalty hides a lifetime of regret. However that sentence doesn’t even begin to do justice to the journey the reader is taken on.

The sweep of the book is vast — often toying with the brutal mythology of the American West — but its power lies in the intimacy McMurtry builds with his sprawling cast. My biggest complaint is that the audiobook didn’t always work for me.

Lee Horsley’s narration is congested and oddly produced, as if spliced together from separate character takes. His choice to voice Gus in a Tommy Lee Jones growl is distracting (especially since Jones played Call in the miniseries), and the chapter announcements by a chipper studio voice kill the mood entirely. 

To be fair, it’s a digitized version of the 1992 cassette, but the technical issues made it harder to sink into the story. My husband found the performance immersive, so perhaps it’s a matter of taste. A new version narrated by Will Patton is available, though given his tendency to chew scenery, I’m not convinced that would be an improvement.

Still, McMurtry’s writing won me over almost immediately. Even through the clumsy production, his prose is lush without excess, his humor sly and his characters vividly drawn. 

The first hundred pages are dense with names, nicknames and endless beans-and-fart jokes, but once the cattle drive begins in earnest, the book finds its rhythm. By then, I was fully invested in Gus, Call, Lorena, Deets, July, Roscoe, Clara, Newt and the rest.

The novel unfolds across four narrative threads — the cattle drive, Lorena and Jake, July’s ill-fated pursuits and Clara’s Nebraska homestead. Each storyline is strong enough to stand on its own, yet McMurtry weaves them together with astonishing control, shifting just as one thread begins to sag. The effect is seamless, and it’s a masterclass in pacing. The book is big, yes, but it rarely drags.

What surprised me most was how emotional I became. For all its violence (and there’s plenty), the heart of “Lonesome Dove” is fidelity, and the ties that bind even the most hardened men. 

The closing chapter, when Call honors Gus in an act of almost foolish devotion, is devastating in its tenderness. It reminded me of Ennis clutching Jack’s flannel at the end of “Brokeback Mountain,” which, fittingly, McMurtry helped adapt for the screen.

Yes, some phrases are overplayed, a few side characters verge on caricature and the treatment of women and Indigenous people wobbles between stereotype and substance. But more often than not, McMurtry subverts expectations. Lorena and Clara, in particular, are resilient, layered and far more compelling than the “hooker with a heart of gold” or “long-suffering wife” archetypes might suggest.

For all its adventure, this is really a tragedy. Beloved characters die suddenly and cruelly, underscoring the callousness of the frontier. These deaths shock, but they’re also what give the novel its staying power. You care about each and every single person.

I was frequently reminded of “Gone With the Wind,” a comparison even McMurtry made. Both are sweeping sagas full of humor, heartbreak and unforgettable characters, but where Mitchell’s novel often frustrated me, McMurtry’s feels warmer, sharper and more humane. 

Don’t be put off by its length: “Lonesome Dove” deserves its reputation as a classic, and not just for its cowboy myth-making, but for its unsentimental honesty about the cost of dreams.

Rating (story): 5/5 stars

Rating (narration): 3/5 stars

Format: Audiobook (library loan)

Dates read: September 15 – September 30, 2025

Multi-tasking: Okay, you can’t listen to a 30+ hour audiobook without multi-tasking, but you need to focus on those first few hours. Otherwise the mess of characters and places will leave you lost, and the novel’s emotional beats won’t hit the way they should.