Lonesome Dove cover
Historical Fiction

Lonesome Dove

by Larry McMurtry
1985945 pagesHistorical Fiction
Mood
Epic, Wry
Protagonist
Ensemble, third-person
Parental Rating
R
Pace
Sweeping

Themes & atmosphere

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Common questions

What you might want to know about Lonesome Dove

The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.

Two ex-Texas Ranger captains run a small Hat Creek outfit in a dusty border town. An old friend pitches them a cattle drive to Montana. The novel follows the trip, and the long lives behind the men taking it.

Yes. Lonesome Dove won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is widely considered one of the great American novels and the definitive modern Western.

Larry McMurtry wrote four Lonesome Dove novels: Dead Man's Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove, and Streets of Laredo. The first two are prequels; Lonesome Dove is the central novel and Streets of Laredo is the sequel.

Lonesome Dove was written by Larry McMurtry, published in 1985 by Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

Lonesome Dove is 945 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.

At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Lonesome Dove takes most readers 14 to 20 hours to finish.

Lonesome Dove is a standalone novel by Larry McMurtry, not part of a series.

Lonesome Dove is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.