Introduction

Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove (1985) is a gritty novel of the American West. However, the author does not attempt to glamorize the events and people of his novel in the way many figures of the American West have reached almost mythic proportions in the American consciousness. Instead, McMurtry offers a realistic portrait of life in the American West during the last half of the nineteenth century.

The book centers on two old men, GusMcRae and Woodrow Call, former Texas Rangers who have settled down in the Texas border town of Lonesome Dove. They run the Hat Creek Cattle Company, and they spend much of their time reclaiming ponies stolen by Mexican thieves and selling them to cowboys or settlers passing through the area. Call, in a fit of dissatisfaction over their dull lifestyle, decides that the...