Boone's Lick
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's return to the kind of story that made him famous -- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century west. Like his bestsellers Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man's Walk, Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else.
Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down her elusive husband, Dick, to tell him she's leaving him. Without knowing precisely where he is, they set out across the plains in search of him, encountering grizzly bears, stormy weather, and hostile Indians as they go. With them are Shay's siblings, G.T., Neva, and baby Marcy; Shay's uncle, Seth; his Granpa Crackenthorpe; and Mary Margaret's beautiful half-sister, Rose. During their journey they pick up a barefooted priest named Father Villy, and a Snake Indian named Charlie Seven Days, and persuade them to join in their travels.
At the heart of the novel, and the adventure, is Mary Margaret, whom we first meet shooting a sheriff's horse out from underneath him in order to feed her family. Forceful, interesting, and determined, she is written with McMurtry's trademark deftness and sympathy for women, and is in every way a match for the worst the west can muster.
Boone's Lick abounds with the incidents, the excitements, and the dangers of life on the plains. Its huge cast of characters includes such historical figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the unfortunate Colonel Fetterman (whose arrogance and ineptitude led to one of the U.S. Army's worst and bloodiest defeats at the hands of the Cheyenne and Sioux) as well as the Cecil family (itself based on a real family of nineteenth-century traders and haulers).
The story of their trek in pursuit of Dick, and the discovery of his second and third families, is told with brilliance, humor, and overwhelming joie de vivre in a novel that is at once high adventure, a perfect western tale, and a moving love story -- it is, in short, vintage McMurtry, combining his brilliant character portraits, his unerring sense of the west, and his unrivaled eye for the telling detail.
Boone's Lick is one of McMurtry's richest works of fiction to date.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Boone's Lick
Great Larry McMurtry never a dull page!