A few bad Montana winters destroyed Call’s dream of a ranching empire. Such startling forward leaps in time are typical of McMurtry’s other sequels two decades also separate the action of “Texasville” from “The Last Picture Show,” of “The Evening Star” from “Terms of Endearment,” and of “Some Can Whistle” from “All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers.” But “Streets of Laredo” is less a sequel than an anti-sequel. It’s been 20 years since Gus McCrae and his old friend Captain Woodrow Call said goodby to Texas and headed north to Montana with a herd of cattle. Now comes the latest course correction, the official sequel to “Lonesome Dove.” Few recent novels could survive comparison to “Lonesome Dove,” and sure enough, “Streets of Laredo” is neither as big nor as great, but it is still one of McMurtry’s most powerful and moving achievements. And even though McMurtry’s best characters were usually women-Aurora Greenway, Patsy Carpenter, Jill Peel all come to mind-his greatest creation is Gus McCrae, the grizzled Texas Ranger who dies unforgettably at the end of “Lonesome Dove.”Īfter that book, perhaps feeling guilty over his apparent betrayal of the modern and the feminine, McMurtry came right back and published two short novels, “Anything for Billy” and “Buffalo Girls,” that parody our heroic Western past, plus three more set in modern Texas, all full of strong women. Then along came “Lonesome Dove,” full of the very romance and legend he seemed to abhor, and it turned out to be his masterpiece. Larry McMurtry’s first nine novels were contemporary tales that debunked the persistent and often destructive myth of the Old West.
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