Rhino Ranch
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In his signature, elegiac prose, Larry McMurtry bids a heartfelt farewell to Duane Moore and the transformative town of Thalia, Texas, in Rhino Ranch, the concluding novel of the Duane Moore saga.
Returning home after a near-fatal heart attack, Duane arrives in Thalia to find his once-dusty oil patch town transformed. His new neighbor, resilient billionaire K.K. Slater, has established Rhino Ranch, a wildlife nature preserve dedicated to preserving endangered black rhinos on former ranchland.
Feeling estranged from the world he helped build, Duane reflects on past loves, fading opportunities, and the shifting values of a small-town America in flux. As he observes the convergence of wildlife conservation, economic change, and new romantic possibilities with K.K., he’s forced to grapple with loss, memory, and identity.
With humor, warmth, and bittersweet wisdom, Rhino Ranch elegantly closes the Duane Moore series. It’s a moving American literary fiction journey rooted in Texas tradition, exploring themes of aging, family legacy, and the endurance of spirit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McMurtry ends the west Texas saga of Duane Moore, begun in 1966 with The Last Picture Show, with a top-shelf blend of wit and insight, sharply defined characters and to-the-point prose. Duane, now in his late 60s, is a prosperous and retired widower, lonely in his hometown of Thalia, Tex. Then billionaire heiress K.K. Slater moves in and opens the Rhino Ranch, a sanctuary intended to rescue the nearly extinct African black rhinoceros. Slater is a strong-willed, independent woman whose mere presence upsets parochial Thalia, and Duane can't quite figure her out. His two best buddies, Boyd Cotton and Bobby Lee Baxter, both work for Slater, and the three friends schmooze with the rich, talk about geezer sex, rat out local meth heads and try to keep track of a herd of rhinos. Mixed in with the humor and snappy dialogue are tender and poignant scenes as the women in Duane's life die or drift away, and Duane befriends a rhino and realizes that his life has lost its purpose. Nobody depicts the complexities of smalltown Texas life and the frailties of human relationships better than McMurtry.
