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Summary
Summary
In the Missouri town of Boone's Lick, a colorful cast of characters stands on the edge of the Western frontier ready to push west to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming.
Summary
Larry McMurtry returns to the Old West in a fast-moving, comic tale about a woman determined to conquer anything that stands in the way of an ultimate confrontation with her wayward husband.
In his first historical novel in ten years, Larry McMurtry introduces Mary Margaret, a nineteenth-century version of the formidable, unforgettable Aurora Greenway of Terms of Endearment. Mary Margaret is married to Dickie, who hauls supplies to the forts along the Oregon Trail and, as Mary Margaret rightly suspects, enjoys the pleasures of other women across most of the frontier. Fed up and harboring a secret love of her own, she collects the kids; her brother-in-law, Seth; her sister, Rosie; and her cranky father and makes her way westward to settle things once and for all.
The story of their trek across the country is packed with the elements McMurtry fans love: encounters with historical figures such as Wild Bill Hickock and U.S. Army colonel Fetterman (whose incompetence resulted in one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of the American West), larger-than-life fictional characters who join the family on their journey, and confrontations with nature at its wildest. With characters based on actual traders of the Old Santa Fe Trail, Boone's Lick is vintage McMurtry.
Author Notes
Larry McMurtry, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other awards, is the author of twenty-four novels, two collections of essays, two memoirs, more than thirty screenplays, & an anthology of modern Western fiction. He lives in Archer City, Texas.
(Publisher Provided)
Larry McMurtry, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other awards, is the author of twenty-four novels, two collections of essays, two memoirs, more than thirty screenplays, & an anthology of modern Western fiction. He lives in Archer City, Texas.
(Publisher Provided)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Putting to rest the notion that with Duane's Depressed he had written his last novel, Pulitzer Prize-winner McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) launches a new series with this whimsical adventure set between Missouri and the wilderness of Wyoming. The CecilsDMary Margaret; her brother-in-law, Seth; four children; half-sister Rosie; and Granpa CrackenthorpeDare weary of waiting 14 months for Mary's husband, Dick, to return from his work as a wagoner in Wyoming while they starve in Civil War-ravaged Missouri. The family decide to travel up the Platte River to find the wayward Dick. Outspoken Mary Margaret, a sturdy matriarch, has a less-obviousDand surprisingly romanticDmotivation for embarking on the journey. Seth, a veteran of the Union army and experienced frontiersman, provides a typical McMurtry male foil to a strong female lead, expressing both rustic wisdom and bewilderment. After a brief and violent adventure with the remains of a bushwhacking gang (and an encounter with Wild Bill Hickok), the family members combat harsh winter weather and fear of Indians as they trek upriver to locate Dick. Narrated by teenage Shay, the novel is reminiscent of McMurtry's lighter fiction (Somebody's Darling; Cadillac Jack; The Late Child). Shay's guileless tone and McMurtry's patented stylistic use of humorous understatement, non sequitur, misunderstanding and misdirection deflect graphic violence, intolerable hardship and even the death of major characters. More an amusing fable of family strife than a serious story with memorable characters, this piece does not approach the substance or quality of McMurtry's better works, but his ardent fans will undoubtedly appreciate the warmth, compassion and humor that the narrative exudes. Agent, Andrew Wylie. 300,000 first printing; BOMC, Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild alternates. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
McMurtry returns to the Old West he knows so well and loves so deeply for this first in a series. On an otherwise ordinary day in 1866, Mary Margaret Cecil's steel-trap mind clangs shut. Time to leave Boone's Lick, Missouri, and trek west to Wyoming, she suddenly announces to that passel of folk who are completely dependent on her--for their physical well being, for their values, and, yes, for ongoing entertainment. Her brood is composed of three teenagers and a toddler, but that by no means completes the universe. There's also rickety-rackety Granpa Crackenthorpe; Rosie, the sweet-natured whore, her half sister, and the ever resourceful Uncle Seth, Mary Margaret's faithful swain, who also happens to be her brother-in-law. And once the buckboards are westward bound, there are two more notable additions: Charley Seven Days, the enigmatic Shoshone on a knightly mission, and Père Villy, a Friar Tuck of a priest, heading for Siberia, where he's decided he's needed. The why of the Cecil clan's migration? The object is to track down Dick Cecil, that wandering wagoner, Mary Margaret's husband, who hasn't been seen in Boone's Lick parts for upwards of 14 months. But then what? That's what Shay Cecil, the story's first-person narrator, would like to know. As for that, Ma keeps her own counsel. There will be Indian fights, brushes with bears, an almost disaster at a river crossing, surprise meetings, painful departures, dozens of near-death experiences until, finally, the trail ends at Wyoming's far-flung Fort Phil Kearney. There, Dick Cecil's family encounters . . . Dick Cecil's family, and the irascible, indomitable Mary Margaret does what she's traveled those hundreds of miles to do. Reminds warmly of Lonesome Dove and others in the McMurtry canon (Comanche Moon, 1997, etc.): colorful, poignant, funny. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
McMurtry's latest novel will not only further endear him to his numerous fans but will also earn him even more devoted readers. He tells a delightfully engaging story as he follows the immediate travails but ultimate successes of a family brimming with strong, hard, and wild characters who reflect the strong, hard, and wild characters of the Old West in the last half of the nineteenth century. Ma Cecil lives a hardscrabble life in Boone's Lick, Missouri, with her children and her brother-in-law. Her husband, a freight hauler, has gone up the Missouri River to work, and Ma hasn't seen him in some months. She decides to load up her family and some tag-alongs and find Pa, to tell him it's all over between them; the journey the Cecils take, first by riverboat and then by mule-driven wagon, is the heart of this simple but atmospheric tale. They journey as far as Wyoming to meet up with Pa Cecil; when they find him, Ma "quits him," but before Ma and her little band of trekkers return to Missouri, they witness a horrible Indian massacre of army soldiers. How everyone in the story fares is laid out in a concluding chapter, much to the reader's satisfaction. ^-Brad Hooper
Library Journal Review
Mary Margaret Cecil has lived in Boone's Lick, MO, for more than 15 years, with her children, her elderly father, and her brother-in-law, Seth. Periodically, her wayward husband, a freight hauler on the Bozeman Trail, visits just long enough to leave her pregnant and remorseful. Discontent with her lot, Mary Margaret marshals her family and sets off up the Missouri River by flatboat and across the plains to Wyoming in search of her husband to tell him that she is "quitting him." A wonderful road story in the tradition of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, although not nearly so prodigious, Boone's Lick has all the adventure of a classic WesternDlosing Grandpa to the river during a violent storm, racing against the onset of winter, burying the remains of Indian massacresDalways pushing forward toward Wyoming. In December 1866, the family finally finds the errant Dick Cecil at Fort Phil Kearny, only to witness the historic Fetterman Massacre three days later. McMurtry's historical novel, told with humor and candor from the perspective of Mary Margaret's oldest son, Shay, is highly recommended for adults and adolescents alike.DThomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.