Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove is the inaugural pick for the new Texas Book Club, a collaboration between Texas Monthly magazine and the Texas Book Festival.
McMurtry’s novel, published in 1985 by Simon & Schuster, is one of the most iconic Texas books in literary history. The book tells the story of two retired Texas Rangers who, along with a band of helpers, drive a large herd of cattle from Texas to Montana. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.”
The novel was adapted into an Emmy Award–winning 1989 miniseries starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, and Diane Lane. McMurtry followed up the novel with three sequels: Streets of Laredo, Dead Man’s Walk, and Comanche Moon.
The new book club, Texas Monthly says, “will explore the powerful thread that Texas writers and characters have woven through American literature, and the role that the state’s contemporary authors, political landscape, and diverse culture play in the canon today.”
A graphic accompanying the Texas Monthly article offered a hint of potential picks for the club, showing the cover of Lonesome Dove alongside copies of Billy Lee Brammer’s The Gay Place, Fernando A. Flores’ Tears of the Trufflepig, H.G. (Buzz) Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights, Edna Ferber’s Giant, and Philipp Meyer’s The Son.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
