an accurate picture of life on the American frontier, from Mexico to Canada, during the late 1870's. He gives us conversationless cowboys whose greatest fear is that they will have to speak to a woman, beastly buffalo hunters, murderous

Soon enough, an old compañero rides into town. (Which is an utterly classical way to open a novel). This is Jake Spoon, a garrulous, fun-loving man who likes to drink, gamble, and make love. He has tales of the Montana country, a cattleman’s paradise. This captures Call’s imagination, and soon enough, he has everyone pointed north on an epic drive. It becomes clear that these cowboy guys did not need a 7-Eleven or a Stop & Shop. The whole natural world was their Stop & Shop. If they needed lunch they shot it. Augustus had always admired the way Newt could stand on one leg while cleaning the other boot. “Look at that, Pea,” he said. “I bet you can’t do that.” The damp burlap the jug was wrapped in naturally appealed to the centipedes, so Augustus made sure none had sneaked under the wrapping before he uncorked the jug and took a modest swig. The one white barber in Lonesome Dove, a fellow Tennessean named Dillard Brawley, had to do his barbering on one leg because he had not been cautious enough about centipedes. Two of the vicious red-legged variety had crawled into his pants one night and Dillard had got up in a hurry and had neglected to shake out the pants. The leg hadn’t totally rotted off, but it had rotted sufficiently that the family got nervous about blood poisoning and persuaded he and Call to saw it off. Other friends raved to me about “Poldark”, years ago....(both the books and the series)....but I didn’t plan on diving in. Well.....While Jake doesn’t push Gus and Call into taking up the task, they are eventually convinced to undertake the adventure. What ensues is a journey that tests their mettle and changes them to their core, not to mention all the people Call and Gus meet along the way and every man and women who they bring along on their drive north.

I've always had a soft spot for western movies. In high school, I roped my friends into watching the ones starring this guy:Whether this response is justified by the grandeur of their mission to tame the frontier, or conditioned by popular culture, it is there and cannot be denied.

Toward the end, through a complicated series of plot twists, Mr. McMurtry tries to show how pathetically inadequate the frontier ethos is when confronted with any facet of life but the frontier; but by that time the reader's emotional It has been quite a while since Lonesome Dove saw any significant hostilities. Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrea were Texas Rangers. They have retired. The fight against the Indians and the Mexicans is over, and those few lingering tensions do not really appeal to the former captains. If you was to wear a gun somebody would just mistake you for a gunfighter and shoot you,” Augustus said, noting the boy’s wistful look. “It ain’t worth it. If Bol ever calls up any bandits I’ll lend you my Henry.” And maybe you’d be dead and I’d have to tidy you up,” Augustus said. “Don’t be reviling yourself. None of us is such fine judges of what to do.”

I struggled with the slow beginning, and was a little bit underwhelmed by the plain prose, until in section 3, when I came to a belated realisation of what I was actually reading: a STORY. I know this sounds really stupid, like duh, what did I think I was reading? I guess the Pulitzer label and the 5-star constellations that abound for this book had me expecting something different. But what this is, ladies and gents, is a high calibre, old-fashioned STORY. No fancy writing, but an epic, all-American adventure, filled with characters who get under your skin in the most insidious manner. first and last,'' and his essays show that he has done considerable digging around in obscure first-hand accounts of trail drives. Also, if the myth-making machine has expropriated the subject, well, Mr. McMurtry knows about For more than a decade, Call and Gus have maintained their chosen way of life. Things change when Jake Spoon comes to town. An old friend of the team, Jake is on the run from a sheriff called July Johnson. The book is also surprisingly brutal in places. Life is often cheap in the early days of the ‘wild west’ and bloodshed is commonplace, as is the casual sexism and racism of these pre PC times. You can go when you’re grown,” the Captain said, and that was all he said. There was no arguing with it, either—not if you were just hired help. Arguing with the Captain was a privilege reserved for Mr. Gus.