If you like good American literature, you’ve got to read Lonesome Dove

Started Lonesome Dove [Kindle] last week and I can’t put it down.

A country western novel about two retired Texas Rangers on their last adventure and the people who thread through their lives past and present. John Steinbeck with more humor. Centered on the big bold American West featuring Indians and outlaws and cattle and guns. But like all good stories the land and the times are just a backdrop to the good stuff: unfinished loves, unspoken friendships, dreams being made and destroyed, life’s little pleasures and bitter sweets. The style and flow remind me of Norm MacLean’s A River Runs Through It which I wanted to be 5x longer. Luckily Lonesome Dove is a hefty book – 800 plus pages, I’m only 2/5 through, and glad there’s a lot more waiting.

Here are some snippets so you get a sense of the author’s writing:

Call’s got to be the one to out-suffer everybody, that’s the pint. I won’t say he’s a man to hunt glory like some I’ve knowed. Glory don’t interest Call. He’s just got to do his duty nine times over or he don’t sleep good.”

“I figured out something, Lorie,” he said. “I figured out why you and me get along so well. You know more than you say and I say more than I know. That means we’re a perfect match, as long as we don’t hang around one another more than an hour at a stretch.”

But he was convinced that Indians understood the moon. He had never talked with an Indian about it, but he knew they had more names for it than white people had, and that suggested a deeper understanding. The Indians were less busy and would naturally have more time to study such things.

Roscoe found it hard even to remember Elmira, though he had done practically nothing but think about her for the last twenty-four hours. All he really knew was that he hated to ride out of the one town he felt at home in. That everyone was eager for him to go made him feel distinctly bitter.

His wife had left for parts unknown, his deputy was wandering in other parts unknown, and the man he was supposed to catch was in yet other parts unknown. In fact, July felt he had reached a point in his life where virtually nothing was known. He and Joe were on a street in Fort Worth, and that was basically the sum of his knowledge.