Explainer: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Why Is This 1985 Western Epic Having a Gen Z Renaissance?

Apr 16, 2025

Every week, we break down a book, podcast, or trend to see if it's actually worth your time.

This week’s Explainer, a subscriber suggestion: Lonesome Dove.

✔️ A 900-page western about aging cowboys on a cattle drive is suddenly everywhere.

Is it worth your time? And what exactly happens in this Pulitzer Prize-winning epic that has people openly weeping on public transportation?

💡 WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?

Lonesome Dove is about two aging Texas Rangers on a dangerous cattle drive from Texas to Montana in the 1870s, but it's really about friendship, purpose, mortality, and the myths we create about ourselves.

📌 "It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times."

❓WHY DID LARRY MCMURTRY WRITE LONESOME DOVE?

McMurtry originally wrote it as a script for a Western starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda. When the movie didn’t happen, he turned it into a novel. What started as a deconstruction of Western myths became a deeply human story about two aging Texas Rangers chasing one last adventure.

It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and is now considered one of the greatest American novels ever written.

📌 "The older the violin, the sweeter the music."

🤠 WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS IN LONESOME DOVE?*

*Don’t read this part if you don’t want to know.

Two retired Texas Rangers, Augustus "Gus" McCrae and Woodrow F. Call, lead a cattle drive from the Texas-Mexico border town of Lonesome Dove to the untamed wilderness of Montana.

But that's like saying The Godfather is about "some Italian guys running a business."

The real story is about:

The scars of war and aging
The heartbreak of loving someone who will never love you back
Found family (and how it can fall apart)
The myth of the “Wild West”—and the brutal reality behind it

And it all builds to an ending that has left readers emotionally devastated for four decades.

Meet Gus McCrae

Charming, philosophical, and a notorious womanizer who masks his depth with humor. He sees the cattle drive as one last adventure before the end.

Meet Captain Call

Stoic, duty-bound, and emotionally stunted. He can't sit still and needs purpose to avoid confronting his own emotions.

Their Friendship

A 30-year bond between opposites. Call is all work, Gus is all talk. They argue constantly but would die for each other.

PART 1: THE DRIVE BEGINS

Call and Gus gather a ragtag crew to help move the cattle: including Newt, a teenager who’s probably Call’s illegitimate son (but Call refuses to admit it); Pea Eye, their loyal deputy; Deets, a brave Black scout; and others.
Jake Spoon, a former Ranger and now a charming coward, shows up. He accidentally killed a man and is on the run.
Jake brings along Lorena Wood ("Lorie"), a beautiful retired prostitute who dreams of reaching San Francisco. Gus falls in love with her, but she’s obsessed with Jake. The tragic heart of the novel

PART 2: CHAOS AND TRAGEDY ON THE TRAIL

Jake quickly proves himself unreliable, abandoning Lorie and falling in with a gang of outlaws.
Lorie is kidnapped and brutally assaulted by a renegade named Blue Duck, one of the book’s most terrifying villains. Gus tracks her down and rescues her.
Deets dies tragically after being mistaken for a Native American raider. His death devastates the group.
Gus and Call’s friendship is tested by every hardship: bad weather, a river crossing, death, outlaws, and existential despair.

PART 3: THE FATE OF EVERYONE

💀 Gus McCrae

After being wounded by arrows in Montana, Gus refuses to have both his legs amputated.
Gus dies in Montana, leaving behind love letters, regrets, and one final request.
He makes Call promise to bury him back in Texas, even if it means hauling his body across the entire country.

😑 Woodrow Call

Stubborn to the end, Call carries Gus’s body thousands of miles back to Texas.
He never admits Newt is his son, but leaves him in charge of the cattle operation.
In the end, Call is alone, emotionally shut down, and haunted by everything he couldn’t say or fix.

🧢 Newt

Loyal and brave, Newt grows up on the trail. Everyone knows Call is his father, but Call can’t say it.
When Call leaves, he gives Newt his horse and saddle, symbolically passing the torch, but still never says the words.
It’s one of the most painful unresolved emotional arcs in the book.

💔 Lorie (Lorena Wood)

After the trauma of Blue Duck, Lorie is changed forever.
She forms a quiet connection with Gus, but he dies before they can find peace together.
Eventually, she goes to live in Nebraska with Clara, Gus’s old flame, and begins a slow recovery.

💬 Clara Allen

Gus’s ex and the love of his life, independent, intelligent, and married to a paralyzed husband.
She refuses to rekindle anything with Gus but takes in Lorena after his death.
She’s one of the strongest female characters in the book and doesn’t sugarcoat anything for Call when he visits.

🪦 Jake Spoon

He falls in with a gang of murderous thieves.
When Call and Gus catch them, Jake is among the killers.
Gus insists they hang all of them, including Jake, and Jake doesn’t fight it. He accepts his death, knowing he crossed a line.

🫥 Pea Eye Parker

Survives the drive.
Loyal, soft-hearted, and haunted by all that happened.

🧛‍♂️ Blue Duck

A violent outlaw and serial murderer, he represents pure evil in the book.
After being captured and jailed, he jumps out a window to his death, but not before taunting Gus and Lorie one last time.

💭 THE ENDING

Gus is buried in Lonesome Dove, as he wanted.
Call returns to the now-empty town. Everyone’s gone. The journey has changed them all.
Call walks away, alone.

📌 "Yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back."

😭 WHY IT STILL HITS HARD (ESPECIALLY NOW)

This is not a book where people ride into the sunset.
It’s a book where people die, fail to communicate, lose everything, and try to make peace with the mess they’ve made.
It’s about legacy, memory, love that doesn’t work out, and the impossibility of closure.

There’s no glory in violence. No perfect heroes. Just flawed people trying to survive, and love, before time runs out.

The West isn’t a symbol of hope, it’s a graveyard of unfulfilled dreams. I’m literally tearing up.

💧 Why You'll Cry

Death isn't glamorized. Unlike many westerns, death in Lonesome Dove is rarely heroic. It's sudden, senseless, and brutal.

Life Goes On. The most devastating aspect is how the world simply continues after tragedy, just as it does in real life.

📌 "The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight."

🤔 Why Is Everyone Obsessed With This Book Right Now?

Ok, but why is a 40-year-old book about 2 old cowboys suddenly captivating people raised on smartphones?

🤠 1. The Cowboy Is Back—But Sadder

In an era where everything feels disposable, there's something appealing about the rugged self-sufficiency and clear purpose of the cowboys' world. Think Red Dead Redemption, Yellowstone, and even Taylor Swift’s folklore phase. Gen Z isn’t romanticizing the frontier. They’re drawn to the brutal reality of frontier life: the mundane daily struggles, the boredom, the fear, and the consequences of violence.

📖 2. BookTok Loves Epics

BookTok made A Little Life a bestseller again. It turned fantasy series like Fourth Wing into cultural moments. And now it’s doing the same with Lonesome Dove.

🧠 3. Redefining Masculinity

Gus and Call represent two very different forms of masculinity:

Gus is emotional, expressive, and philosophical.
Call is stoic, repressed, and emotionally unavailable.

At a time when people are actively rethinking what masculinity should look like, Gus and Call offer two very different models. Both are broken in different ways and readers are obsessed with unpacking them.

🐴 4. Nostalgia in Disguise

Unlike traditional Westerns that glorify the frontier, Lonesome Dove is brutally honest about:

The violence of expansion
The myth of the “good old days”
How men fail the women around them
The futility of “one last ride”

It looks like an old-school cowboy novel, but it quietly deconstructs all the heroic Cowboy myths.

🤝 5. Craving Authentic Connection

Gen Z grew up in a digital world of carefully curated identities. Lonesome Dove offers characters who are unfiltered, flawed, and deeply human. The characters face timeless questions about meaning and connection. In a time of doom scrolling and superficial interactions, the friendship between Gus and Call feels real.

🌎 6. Finding Meaning in an Unstable World

With economic uncertainty, anxiety, and division, maybe we connect with characters who face an equally uncertain future as the American frontier changes around them?The book gives permission to feel deeply in a world that often encourages emotional suppression.

🏆 7. It’s Actually Good

Sometimes things come back because they’re “so bad they’re good.” This is not that.

Gorgeous writing. Both accessible and beautiful.
Devastating characters
Perfect pacing
Humor + heartbreak

It's not just a Western. It's a masterful character study dressed in cowboy boots.

⚖️ Final Verdict: Is It Worth Reading?

✅ It’s emotional, funny, violent, and it will destroy you.

⚠️ Fair warning: The book is long (900+ pages), contains violence, sexual assault, and racist language reflective of the time period. It doesn't glorify these elements but presents them as part of the harsh reality of the frontier.

📌 Remember This: Quotes That Hit Hard

📌 “If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment.”

📌 “The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk."

📌 “It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living.”

📌 “You ever notice how some people always smile when they’re talking to you? You know, like they’re real friendly? Only, they ain’t smiling for you—they’re smiling for them.”

📌 "I'm glad I've been wrong enough to keep in practice... You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it."

📌 "I hate rude behavior in a man. I won't tolerate it."

📌 "Call knew that nothing got a man killed quicker than worrying about getting killed."

♥️ If You Like This, You’ll Love…

📖 The Rest of the Lonesome Dove Series There are three other books in the series: Dead Man's Walk (prequel), Comanche Moon (prequel), and Streets of Laredo (sequel).

📺 The Lonesome Dove Miniseries An incredible adaptation starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones that captures the heart of the book. (tubi, peacock)

📖 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Another brutal Western epic, but way darker and more violent

📖 True Grit by Charles Portis A sharper, shorter Western with a girl at the center

📖 East of Eden by John Steinbeck One of the best books ever.

👋🏻 Before You Go

I didn’t expect a cowboy book to break my heart, but here we are.

📩 Like this? Share it with a friend

🗓️ Next Week: Should we do Attached? The Body Keeps the Score? Also open to suggestions.