Lonesome Dove, written by Larry McMurtry, is a western genre novel and the first book of the Lonesome Dove series. The story follows the lives of retired Texas Rangers and cohorts as they drive cattle across the country to the unsettled lands of Montana.

McMurtry originally developed the tale as a theatrical motion picture entitled The Streets of Laredo (a title later used for the sequel), which was to have starred John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and James Stewart, and directed by Peter Bogdanovich. When plans fell through, the original screenplay went into limbo. McMurtry later resurrected the unproduced screenplay as a full-length novel, which became a best seller and won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for literature.

The story focuses on the relationship of three retired Texas Rangers and their adventures driving a cattle herd from Texas to Montana.

Two of them, Augustus "Gus" McCrae and Woodrow F. Call, run a ranch in the small Texas town of Lonesome Dove. Working with them are Joshua Deets and Pea-Eye Parker. They adopted Newt, Call's illegitimate son by a prostitute named Maggie, as a young boy and Newt has grown to a teenager at the time of the story. Call, dedicated to raising the boy, does not admit, least of all himself, that he is Newt's father. The third ranger, Jake Spoon, is a ladies' man and gambler. In a small town in Arkansas, Jake fired upon another player who assaulted him, but accidentally killed a dentist, who was also the mayor, and whose brother, July Johnson, is the sheriff.

Jake goes to Lonesome Dove to evade Johnson, who is under pressure from his sister-in-law to bring Spoon to trial, despite the accidental nature of his brother's death. Reunited with McRae and Call, his description of Montana inspires Call to gather a herd of cattle and drive them to Montana. Call is attracted to the romantic notion of finally having something to do besides sitting idly at home, and of being able to see one of the last pieces of untamed land before the end of the Old West.

Despite the characters being Texas Rangers rather than professional cattlemen, Gus and Call were modeled after real-life cattle drivers Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight, and many parallels exist between the stories. When Goodnight and Loving's guide, Bose Ikard, died, Goodnight carved a wooden tombstone for him, just as Call does for Deets. Upon Loving's death, Goodnight brought him home to be buried in Texas, just as Call does for Augustus.

Lonesome Dove was filmed as a television miniseries in 1989. It starred Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Diane Lane, and Anjelica Huston. The series was awarded six Emmy Awards and was nominated for 13 others.

References

External Links

• [http://www.library.txstate.edu/swwc/ld/ldexhibit1.html Lonesome Dove exhibit at ]