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Lonesome Dove

By Larry McMurtry

Published 1985

Read April 2026

This reader recalls there was an extremely popular miniseries on TV called Lonesome Dove.  This reader was aware that the book was a western.  This was the extent of this reader’s knowledge of Lonesome Dove prior to reading The Correspondentt.  The Correspondent somewhat regularly wrote to book authors, and she wrote to Larry McMcurty about the book.  This reader was struck by three things her letter discloses.  1) She was writing after her third reading of this (843 page) book.  2) She was congratulating the author for his courage to cause his characters pain.  3) Despite the pain, the two main characters had great vitality.  These points made this book quite intriguing.

This reader listened to the audiobook read by Will Patton.  This edition had a forward by Taylor Sheridan, a writer and director whose TV series this reader has greatly enjoyed.  He indicates in his forward that 1) he’s read the book countless times; 2) reading this book made him change his life course towards being a storyteller.  So, a second major recommendation for the book.

When this reader started the book, she wasn’t sure she would enjoy Will Patton’s Texas accent, but her worry was quickly felled.  Will Patton is a distinguished movie actor as well as audiobook reader and his acting capabilities were well demonstrated by the voices he gave to the many characters in this book. 

McMurtry created two remarkable lead characters, Captain Augustus (Gus) Macrae and Captain Woodrow F Call.  The men served in the Texas Rangers together for twenty years, “civilizing” Texas by eliminating attacks on white settlers by the indigenous population.  After the US Army took over this role, they started the Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium in Lonesome Dove, a very small-town Texas border town on the Rio Grande. Gus likes the ladies, gambling, and drinking.  Woodrow is happiest working.  Although the two seem unlikely partners, they have been partners for thirty years when we first meet them—20 years successfully fighting Indians and 10 years building this company.  We learn over the course of the book that their partnership is built on a friendship that runs very deeply in the hearts of both men.

The story starts when Jake Spoon arrives at the Hat Creek establishment.  He was a Texas Ranger with Gus and Woodrow but hasn’t seen them since the Rangering days.  He’s also a lady’s man and gambler who dislikes hard work and he’s running away from an Arkansas sheriff of Fort Smith Arkansas who is chasing him after Jake accidently killed the sheriff’s brother who is also Fort Smith’s dentist.  He speaks of marvelous land in Montana and the opportunities that would await the first cattle ranch started there.  Woodrow Call’s interest is stirred, and he decides that the Hat Creek company should be that first cattle ranch.  Thus begins the start of a 3000-mile cattle drive across multiple rivers and through a variety of perils. 

But the perils and adventures are, in some ways, a small part of the book’s attraction.  McMurtry fills the pages with a large, but manageable, cast of memorable characters to whom this reader became attached in addition to Gus and Woodrow.  Some of them, like Jake Spoon, aren’t very sympathetic, generally due to their treatment of other characters.

 Most of the characters, as expected for a cattle drive, are men—Gus and Woodrow of course and their various cowboy cattle handlers and cook. Pea Eye and Deets were Rangers with Gus and Woodrow and have worked with their Hat Creek company ever since.  Pea Eye isn’t very bright but he is kind and loyal.  Deets eventually remembers his first name is Joshua.  As a black man, others on the cattle drive look a bit down on him.  But Deet’s ability to tell the weather, find water, and track anything and anybody makes him invaluable and respected.  Newt Dobbs, a teen-ager, has lived with Gus and Woodrow since his mother, Maggie, a prostitute died when he was a child.  Newt doesn’t know the identity of his father.  Bolivar, a Mexican, is the cook at the Hat Creek company.  He starts out on the cattle drive but leaves to go back to his family in Mexico.  There are a variety of other men that Woodrow recruits for the cattle drive who play various roles in the story, including being killed by some of the perils.

A parallel story develops around July Johnson, the Arkansas sheriff pursuing Jake Spoon.  As soon as he leaves town to pursue Jake Spoon, his wife of only a short time leaves Fort Smith to head north.  Roscoe, Jake’s deputy, is hounded by his sister-in-law to either chase after the wife or find Jake and tell him about his wife.  He pursues the latter course with his horse, pack, and no knowledge of how he will find Jake.  This story eventually intersects the main story in addition to the Jake Spoon connection. 

 McMurtry gives us four notable women characters.  Lorena Wood is a major character.  She is a beautiful young woman who ends up in the “sporting life” and is the only whore in the small town of Lonesome Dove.  She is captivated by Jake Spoon when he comes to town.  She demands Jake to fulfill his promise to her to take her to San Franscico.  They follow the Hat Creek cattle drive for awhile but Jake leaves her and she is captured by Blue Duck, a wicked Indian.  Gus, with whom she already had an interesting relationship—he loves to talk and paid Lorena well to spend time with him after the poke,–rescues her. 

Clara Allen is a second major character although partly because Gus talks about her as much as she is active in the story.  She is still loved by Gus even though she chose a dull horse trader over him to marry.  Gus is willing to go on the cattle drive in part so that he can stop and see her in Nebraska.

Janey plays a role in the Roscoe subplot.  She is a young girl who escapes from the man who bought her.  Her skill with throwing stones keeps alive Roscoe when she joins him.  Finally, Elmira Johnson escapes her marriage to July Johnson, the Arkansas sheriff, when he leaves to chase Jake Spoon. 

Each woman demonstrates strength and courage but in very different ways.  Lorena and Clara are the female characters most completely developed. 

Lonesome Dove is likely re-read by people because it is a character-driven book that has a great story.  The author lets readers in on the internal conflicts that various characters are working through as they face various external issues driven by the geography they are travelling—the weather, the rivers they must cross, the availability of water, the threat of attacks by Indians and bad white guys.  Readers can luxuriate listening to the internal thoughts of Gus, Lorena, Clara, Newt, Woodrow, and others as they move along the trail, or in Clara’s case, make their way through the chores of the day. 

Theme topics abound including unrequited love, loyalty, marriage, friendship, death, betrayal, violence, and more.  McMurtry packs a lot into 843 pages and it’s clear some readers are willing to read it multiple times to bathe in his story-telling that wraps these themes around such believable characters.  This reader committed 36 hours to listening to this book and is glad she owns this book so she can listen again. 

The Boston Girl

By Anita Diamant

Published 2014

Read April 2026

Addie Baum, at eighty-five, is asked by her granddaughter to explain how she became the woman she is.  Thus starts the tale of Addie Baum, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who came to Boston from “what must be Russia now”.  Her father had come with their two daughters, Betty and Celia in about 1896.  Her mother came about 3 years later.  Addie was born in Boston and lived her entire life there.

Addie jumps into her story in 1915 when she was fifteen.  It chronicles her family’s struggles with living in this new country and concentrates on her teens and early twenties.   While the family no longer lived in a small abode with dirt floors and no running water, they had to deal with financial difficulties and an extremely different culture. 

The book is essentially a coming-of-age story for Addie.   We learn much about her late adolescence and early adulthood as her sister Betty leaves the household to take a job and live in a boarding house and her sister Celia gets married.  Celia’s departure requires Addie to leave school and find work so that the family can pay the rent and buy food.  Despite first her family’s strictness and then the burden of working, Addie finds a way to pay for stays at the Rockport Lodge a (real!) a tourist house founded in 1906 to provide chaperoned holidays for Boston young women of limited means.  Here Addie makes life-long friends that support her and each other through various tragedies that befall them.  We cheer for Addie as she too leaves her parents’ home to live in a boardinghouse and ventures through a series of jobs while always contributing substantially to her parents’ expenses. 

Coming of age stories are not as interesting to this reader as they once were, which is not surprising given this reader’s stage of life.  However, this reader found this book quite engaging as Addie’s teen and young adult years occur about the same time as this reader’s two grandmothers.  This reader finally learned as a retiree that her maternal grandmother (born 1911) was forced to leave school at age 16, in this case to take care of the family after her mother died in childbirth.  After her father remarried somewhat hastily, this grandmother married to get out of the household and took one of her siblings to live with them. That knowledge helped explain her adamant declaration that this reader not entertain involvement with men until this reader had at least her master’s degree!  This reader learned that all of this grandmother’s siblings were farmed out to various family members at the demand of the new wife.  This reader’s paternal grandmother (born 1911) also did not complete high school and left home to marry a farmer’s son who lived across the field from her family’s farm.  Neither grandfather farmed full-time, but did both did part-time, and made most of their living otherwise.  Both grandmothers worked in factories during WWII but returned homemaking after the war. So, this reader’s grandmothers from rural communities followed a more “standard” path of not leaving home until they became wives and mothers and stayed in the workplace for only a relatively short period of their married life. 

Addie’s story was more influenced by being in a city.  Her family was dependent on wages to buy food, clothing, and shelter vs a rural life that allows much of the family’s food being raised in their gardens, chicken coops, and the like.  While Addie’s parents wanted their daughters to contribute monetarily to the family, they didn’t want them leaving home until they married.  Both Betty and Addie made use of boarding houses for single women that were available in Boston at that time despite their mother’s objections and corresponding verbal abuse.   

This reader was given pause by this book about whether and when children become interested in their parents’ lives before they had children.  In this book, it’s not a daughter asking Addie about her life, but a granddaughter and her school assignment.  This reader did have some conversations with her mother about her youth, all of them occurring only once this reader was retired.  Interestingly, many areas were left unexplored, the barriers to these areas neither acknowledged nor broken.  The environment to discuss the past with grandparents may be easier, as the narrator suggests.

This was a nicely engaging book for this reader.  Learning about Boston and its culture during this time period was fascinating:  multiple immigrant populations who brought a diversity of religious and secular practices; the role of newspapers and other periodicals as the “social media” device as well as a source of news; the rapidly changing mores in the city and in the country; and the impact of war and a pandemic.  While Addie’s parents apparently didn’t venture beyond their own immigrant population and its mores much, Addie and members of her generation did and did so through the local “Saturday Club”,  at Rockport Lodge, and their workplaces.  Although the author deftly lets us know about Boston culture of the time, the story is grounded in themes of family, friendship, courtship, marriage, mother/daughter conflict, and maturation of a young woman balancing many stresses.  This book will be a rich source of discussion for many book groups. 

Meet Me at the Museum

By Anne Youngson

Published 2018

Read Jan 2026

This reader was introduced to this book while waiting in line to sign up for an immensely popular book discussion at a local library, the topic of which would be The Correspondent.   Interaction in the waiting line led to the recommendation of this book, another book written in the epistolary format.

Tina Hopgood, the wife of a farmer in England, and Anders Larsen, a curator at a Danish museum are the correspondents in this book.  A good friend of Tina has recently died and, it seems, their shared life-long dream of visiting the Tollund Man, a bog man from the Iron Age, at the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark.  Tina writes to a professor at the museum who was involved in its excavation.  The professor has died but a curator at the museum, Anders Larsen, responds to her inquiry and suggests she visit the museum to see the exhibit as it’s never too late.  Thus commences a series of letters between these two individuals.

Over a long series of letters, the two correspondents evolve from information exchange about the Tollund Man and the like to sharing their losses and their disappointments as well as things they enjoy in their very different environments.  We learn that forty years ago, Tina’s unplanned pregnancy propelled her into a marriage with a farmer she likely didn’t even love at the time.  She discusses this early decision and the life she’s lived as a result.  Despite much daily activity and the gift of grandchildren, she finds herself lonely.  Anders’s wife had a number of problems and has recently died and he is now alone in his very neat and efficient home. 

The evolution of their letters led this reader to worry a bit about “emotional adultery” but an interesting twist in the story brings that worry to an end. 

Enjoy this fairly short read to learn about these interesting characters, their relationship, and the story twist.  You won’t be disappointed. 

The Correspondent

By Virginia Evans

Published 2025

Read Dec 2025

This book has been described as a “sleeper hit”.  Readers loved it and recommended it to others and the book’s readership increased like wildfire.  This reader put this book in the category of “my favorite book of the year”.  Why?

A.  This reader enjoys the epistolary style.  This website has already sung the praises of Lady Susan (read well before this book) and 84 Charing Cross Road (read right after this one).  In this book, most of the letters are by The Correspondent, but answers to some of her correspondence help flesh out the arc of several stories that are told in this book.  This reader finds this form of story telling quite engaging. 

B.  This reader really liked The Correspondent for a number of reasons.

1)  The Correspondent is aging.  At 73 she is beginning to suffer from congenital eye syndrome that is starting to impact her sight.  She is worried about her memory.  She is actively reflecting on her past.  The law partner with whom she spent her entire career, first in private law practice and then as his clerk to his judgeship, dies, and she is asked to speak at his memorial service.  She is confronting her role in the collapse of her marriage (which didn’t survive the accidental death of her youngest son at age 8) and in her strained relationship with her daughter.  She is dealing with new technology and its ramifications.  This reader is also retired and is attracted to interesting characters in this stage of their lives, especially those who are actively reflecting on their past. 

2)  Reading and writing are very important to The Correspondent.  Certainly, they were the primary tools of her trade while working.  But in addition to her law practice, she had used written correspondence throughout her life to interact with the world—her friends, family and people who interested her.  Her written words were chosen carefully and specifically to convey her thoughts and feelings.  Writing made her thoughts and feelings real. 

This approach resonates with this reader since she was trained as a scientist.  While creating tables and graphs and talking about them with others is useful work, the real work is not complete until the results and conclusions are documented.  The most critical work is deciding what words truly reflect the results and what conclusions can really be drawn and recorded.

3)  The book actually motivated this reader to a new action.  The Correspondent wrote to several authors and they responded.  This reader decided to try this.  In this case, the medium was email vs US postal mail because only the author’s email was readily available.  This reader spent quite some time formulating the letter.  The author responded! 

4)  The Correspondent and her sister-in-law both comment on the books they are reading, some of which this reader had already enjoyed.  The Correspondent’s fictional interaction with an author created another new action driven for this reader:  reading Lonesome Dove, a book she otherwise hadn’t considered, but will be recommended in an upcoming essay. 

4) There is quite a number of things going on in The Correspondent’s life which this reader will allow you to discover.  All of it quite believable for a woman her age.  Some of it resolved, some not, which is quite appreciated.  Not everything in life gets resolved and sometimes the resolutions are certainly not desired ones. 

In summary, it’s not surprising to this reader that this book has found its way into many readers’ hands and ears.  There is much to discuss!  Two of this reader’s book groups have already discussed it.  This reader will nominate it for her northern book group, after the waiting lines for library copies shrink. 

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

By Gabrielle Zevin

Published 2014

Read Dec 2025

It’s not clear to this reader how she chose to get this audiobook but she is glad she did.  The only other Gabrielle Zevin book this reader has encountered is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.  In that book she used the story of three young people that develop and sell video games to give readers some insight into that industry and people who inhabit it.  In this book she uses the story of a mismatched group of people to give readers some insight into independent bookstores and the publisher agents that sell them books.

While some have found this book to be too predictable and somewhat sappy, this reader does not share this opinion.  Several characters must reset their lives after experiencing tragedy.  Their reset is generally neither very pretty nor quick.  The author does a good job of honestly showing their flaws and misguided steps.

When we meet A.J. Fikry, he is a 39-year-old widower who is mourning the loss of his wife, business partner, and love of his life, who perished in a car accident.  He’s drinking himself to sleep each night and thinks that drinking himself to death may be a good path for him.  He and his wife were both in literature PhD programs and not enjoying them when his wife suggests they open a bookstore in her hometown—Alice—which is on Alice Island, an island off the New England coast that is only reached by a ferry.  During one night of mourning, while passed out from drink, Fikry’s beloved and very rare copy of Tamerlane, a book of early poetry by Edgar Allen Poe (the writer at the center of his unfinished PhD thesis) goes missing and thus his “nest egg” for retirement.    He is well described as an often-surly book snob which doesn’t help his store’s bottom line.   He is quite mean to the new publishing rep for Knightly Press after the previous rep died.

A major change in Fikry’s life happens when a two-year-old is left in his store with a note “please take care of her”.   Her drowned mother is found washed up on Alice Island’s beach. The inconvenience of the required ferry trip for the social worker assigned to the case means the child spends a weekend with Fikry who decides to be her foster care provider.  Yes, the reader needs to accept that this proposal actually flies, but so what—it’s a fictional novel!

Other significant characters include:  1) Chief Lambiase, divorced from his high school sweetheart who wasn’t actually a sweet person,  who investigates the case of the drown woman and abandoned child;  2) Ismay, the sister of Fikry’s dead wife, a school teacher who is unhappily married to 3) Daniel Parish, a one-hit author; and 4) Amelia, the publisher’s book rep and a book lover. 

Each chapter has a short note from A.J. about a book.  We eventually learn these notes are for Maya, the little girl he eventually adopts.  There are plenty of book references that book lovers will likely appreciate—recall this it the Storied Life of our protagonist.

This was certainly an enjoyable read.  Amid the book references and story about a bookstore, a major theme is relationships and their importance in our lives.  The relationships that the characters develop enable them to live richer lives than they had before and to get through past and present tragedies.  This reader gives this book a recommendation TO READ!

PS The reader of the audiobook that this reader enjoyed was perfect for this book. 

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

By Karen Joy Fowler

Published 2013

Read March 2016

This reader must admit she’s not sure how she came upon this book.  The title was intriguing and the cover was bright.  Wow that’s about it!  This reader was fully virginal about the book’s characters, plots, and the interesting plot twist revealed about 1/3 way into the book which will not be revealed. 

What this reader will tell you is that Rosemary, the narrator of the story, is quite clear she’s starting in the middle of the story and will come back to the beginning later.  In the middle, Rosemary is a dilatant student at UC Davis.  She tells us that both her older brother, Lowel, and her sister, Fern, stopped living with the family for some unspecified reason(s).  She and her parents moved from the house they had all lived in to a smaller house and that in-between she stayed with her grandparents.  During that in-between time, she wasn’t sure why she was there or whether she would see her parents again.  So now this reader was fully engaged—what happened and why?

Before we learn that we are introduced to some characters that Rosemary meets via a chance encounter.  These characters are clearly not people her parents would be enthusiastic about, but Rosemary is apparently lonely and engages with them. 

All of the characters we meet are drawn as “full-bodied” meaning brimming with interesting histories and facets but are all flawed, damaged, or both. This makes for engaging reading as well. Fortunately for Rosemary and the reader, Lowell briefly comes back into Rosemary’s life, and we start learning why we’re all beside ourselves.

This reader won’t spoil anymore of the book.  Unfortunately, after the plot twist occurs, the book dragged a bit for this reader but eventually got back on track and this reader completed the book quite quickly, wanting to know what was coming after the middle of the story. 

This reader wouldn’t put this book at the top of a “must read” list but it’s certainly an interesting read.