Buffalo Girls
A Novel
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4.3 • 8 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A strange old woman caked in Montana mud pens a letter to her darling daughter back East—the writer's name is Martha Jane, but her friends call her Calamity...
I am the Wild West, no show about it. I was one of the people who kept it wild.
Larry McMurtry returns to the territory of his Pulitzer Prize–winning masterwork, Lonesome Dove, to sing the song of Calamity Jane's last ride. In a letter to her daughter back East, Martha Jane is not shy about her own importance. Martha Jane—better known as Calamity—is just one of the handful of aging legends who travel to London as part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in Buffalo Girls. As he describes the insatiable curiosity of Calamity's Indian friend No Ears, Annie Oakley's shooting match with Lord Windhouveren, and other highlights of the tour, McMurtry turns the story of a band of hardy, irrepressible survivors into an unforgettable portrait of love, fellowship, dreams, and heartbreak.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McMurtry's ( Anything for Billy ) meandering, gentle-humored threnody for the passing of the old Wild West, assembles an eclectic crew of aging friends, both fictional and historic. In the late 1800s, ex-beavermen Jim Ragg and Bartle Bone ramble over the prairie, sleep in ghost towns and lament the days when ``beaver still splashed in the cool streams of the west.'' With them travels Indian scout No Ears, whose acute senses are keyed to the animal and spirit worlds. In Miles City, Mont., softhearted Dora runs her fancy bordello, bewailing her lost cowboy T. Blue, who married a half-Indian bride but who still yearns for and visits the lovelorn madam. Dora finally weds young giant Ogden, gets pregnant and buys Miner's Rest, a proper hotel, signaling that the ``era of the buffalo girls'' is also over. Interspersed throughout the narrative are sharpshooter Calamity Jane's brooding letters to her daughter, Janey, whose father was Wild Bill Hickok. A trip to England with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show fails to cheer the gang, and they return home to sink into melancholy and death. McMurtry's genius with language always enchants, but this tale's charm is muffled by sadness. Literary Guild featured alternate.
Customer Reviews
Buffalo Girls
Felt like I was living alongside all the well-written characters of this part fable of the West. Especially liked the journal entries of Martha Jane. Watching Deadwood on HBO Max currently helps to keep MJ alive a little longer.
What’s next in the McMurtry catalog?