Rhino Ranch
A Novel
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4.2 • 93 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In his signature his elegiac prose, Rhino Ranch finds Larry McMurtry bidding a final farewell to his multi-book hero, Duane Moore, and the rapidly changing town of Thalia, Texas.
The town of Thalia, Texas has changed forever. By the end of When the Light Goes, Duane was already realizing how different his dusty old oil patch was becoming. Now, coming back from a near-fatal heart attack, it is nearly unrecognizable to him. Returning home to recover, Duane finds a new neighbor, K.K. Slater, a stubborn, tough, quirky billionairess, who also happens to have opened the Rhino Ranch—a preserve to save the black Rhino—on her property.
In the midst of a world to which he no longer belongs, in a town in which the land that used to reap oil now serves as a nature preserve, he watches the world change around him and begins to reflect on love affairs past and the missed opportunities he now regrets. Rhino Ranch is a bittersweet and fitting end to this iconic series, a tribute to all of the emotion, hilarity, whimsy, and poignancy that readers have followed across decades.
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.
Customer Reviews
Rhino Ranch
Kind of worn out the Texas yarn. Good dialogue, but tired tropes of cowboys, oil guys, and layabouts and their obsession with their dicks and their women, who are rich and feckless or poor and salt-of-the-earth heroines who can’t help loving those tropes. Time to retire the formula.
Rhino Ranch
Excellent. Saw myself in it, a little too strongly sometimes.
Reliably Good Writing... As Usual
Good characters, good writing, enjoyable casual read. Nothing too fast or furious like the cotton candy of most books trying too hard to match the sound bites and snapshots of the frenetic modern world. Just moves along at the right pace. McMurtry knows his job and does it well, keeping it interesting.