In the dusty border town of Lonesome Dove, Texas, two former Texas Rangers run the ramshackle Hat Creek Cattle Company: taciturn, driven Captain Woodrow Call and his garrulous, philosophising partner Augustus McCrae. When their old comrade Jake Spoon drifts back with tales of the unfenced grasslands of Montana, Call fixes on the idea of driving a herd north to found the first ranch in that country, and the outfit sets out on a journey of thousands of miles. Among those swept along are the young orphan Newt, the prostitute Lorena, who dreams of San Francisco, and, waiting in Nebraska, Clara Allen, the woman Gus never stopped loving. McMurtry, who set out to deflate the myth of the cowboy and found he had written its grandest elegy instead, fills the trail with river crossings, rustlers, and the murderous outlaw Blue Duck, testing every character against hardship and loss. Beneath the sweep of the epic runs something quieter: a study of a lifelong friendship between two men who can barely say what they mean. It is a novel about ageing, unspoken love, the cost of ambition, and the closing of the American frontier.
