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Fiction. Literature. Western. HTML:From the Pulitzer Prize�winning author Larry McMurtry comes the sequel and final book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy. An exhilarating tale of legend and heroism, Streets of Laredo is classic Texas and Western literature at its finest. Captain Woodrow Call, August McCrae's old partner, is now a bounty hunter hired to track down a brutal young Mexican bandit. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker, a witless deputy, and one of the last members of the Hat Creek outfit, Pea Eye Parker, now married to Lorena�once Gus McCrae's sweetheart. This long chase leads them across the last wild streches of the West into a hellhole known as Crow Town and, finally, into the vast, relentless plains of the Texas frontier.… (more)
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Call is back in Texas, the cattle ranch in Montana having
It's a very sad book, and I think McMurtry tried to show the difference between Call and Gus in the ending.
*****Spoiler alert*****
Also why oh why did McMurtry just abandon characters and plot between books? Why kill off Newt when we aren't watching, and shut down the ranch for no real reason before we could see what it's like, and why in heavens marry Lorena and Pea Eye without showing us how that happens? I was wishing the whole book through that I could have read that other book that disappeared before he got to this one. Sigh. I don't even know whether to read the other, now. That makes me sad.
Streets contains a couple story arcs. There is a lot of grief, pain and worse in this novel with some really bad 'bad guys' and which carries a melancholy air throughout. This is sad and dark, and the violence is everywhere and seems especially towards women in here. It is rather disturbing, perhaps moreso because it is handed out so matter-of-factly. The new and developing characters are sometimes interesting, sometimes a bore. I suppose it isn't fair to expect it, but the magic that came together in Lonesome Dove didn't happen for me here. This is still excellent storytelling and it turns out to be a good but unhappy story that surprisingly manages a little bit of a happy ending, although McMurtry does his best to throw a downer even on that. Those who want a synopsis of the story can find a reasonably good one on wikipedia, although it will be spoilersville. I wish I could rate this novel higher, because it is well written. Unfortunately it is such a dark thing and I leave it feeling very sad. Mad slasher horror flicks are happier than the darkness and horror here. I feel bruised and beaten down by this book.
3/4 (Good).
It has no reason to be so long (the EPILOGUE is 50 pages). There are some great scenes in it, though.
One big change is that the mood is much more
Somber, too, because it seems like nothing good ever happens to anybody in this book. One of the cheeriest and most devoted characters in the book meets and evil and senseless end. Maria, the likeable mother of the rather soulless Joey Garza, main villain, seems like she's lived a nearly joyous life at the hands of hard men and her even harder son. In fact, whenever there's a new character, be prepared for a depressing life story or a depressing death scene. Be prepared for that with most characters.
Despite the heaping helpings of depression, this is exactly what I wanted to read right now. It's still a western, and there's still something that appeals to me about the kinds of situations and characters that appeal to me in these types of stories. There's a lot of horrible things that happen in this book, but there's still a happy ending. The characters (mostly) do what they set out to. They all seem to learn about themselves in the process, including Call.
It's hard to say more than that, though. I liked it, but I can't even point to my favorite scenes, because almost all of them are really sad. Most of the humor is in when characters size each other up, then the perspective flips and we see the opinions reversed. Famous Shoes is a great character for levity, but he isn't nearly as lively as Gus, and not even Famous Shoes can bring joy to this story.
Still. Gunfights. Tracking. Long, very cold nights. Men wondering what their purpose is. Train robberies. An out-of-place Yankee that's incredibly loyal. There's a lot to like here, and I enjoyed it immensely.
At about halfway through the book, I was finally hooked.
By 3/4 of the way through, I decided I loved the book, just as I had loved Lonesome Dove. McMurtry is a fabulous