Lonesome Dove

Larry McMurtry's four novels of the Texas frontier, following Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae from young Rangers to old men. The cattle drive of Lonesome Dove came first and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986; McMurtry then wrote forward to the pair's last years in Streets of Laredo before turning back to their beginnings in Dead Man's Walk and Comanche Moon. The result is a series best read either way round: publication order follows McMurtry's own change of mind about where the story lay, while chronological order runs from the 1840s to the 1890s and turns four novels into one long account of a frontier closing.