Uva Uvam Vivendo Varia Fit

“I’m glad I’ve been wrong enough to keep in practice… You can’t avoid it, you’ve got to learn to handle it. If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life, it’s bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day—that way they ain’t usually much worse than a dry shave.”

This book had haunted me my entire academic career, so once that was all over (and in the spirit of a Red Dead Redemption 2 Summer), I finally decided to take a crack at it. At well over 1,000 pages, the first 100 are a bit tough to get through, unless you enjoy the day-to-day ins and outs of being a cattle rancher on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, but wow, this ended up being one of the most rewarding books I’ve ever encountered and it’s taken me a bit longer than I intended in order for me to write my review of it. 

Lonesome Dove is an odyssey that follows Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae and Captain Woodrow F. Call, two famous former Texas Rangers, and their band of ranch hands from the Hat Creek Company as they move a herd of cattle up to Montana, which was a fever dream spurred on by one of the diciest of characters to join them: Jake. From the moment you really get to know him, you cannot wait for something to take him out: die, disappear, wander into a bar, literally anything to never to be seen again. Which I found funny by the end of the book, because in those first 100 pages, I had the same inclinations about Gus.

Gus starts off—and honestly, even through the end—with a very go-with-the-flow attitude. He doesn’t take much initiative around the ranch and is painted early on as a bit of a freeloader. But that turns out to be a complete mischaracterization, which there is a very high chance that this was intentional. I didn’t think I’d end up caring much about Gus, and truthfully, I do see Call’s perspective more often than his. But by the last couple of pages, I didn’t want Gus to go. At the end of the day, he was a good man who put others and their well-being before his own. And Call recognizes that, as well as the weight of their lifelong friendship, when he fulfills Gus’s wish to be buried back home.

If anything, this book isn’t just about a riveting journey across the American West—it’s more about friendship and the company you keep. When Gus finally reunites with Clara (who never got along with Call), she questions why he chose Call over her, saying, “Call is an emotionally stunted man who could never adjust to peace and never liked your sense of humor…” And Gus, frankly, doesn’t have an answer. Clara was never going to marry him, and I think he recognized that he was worth more with Call than doing housework for a woman who had already chosen someone else. I do think that if Clara had agreed to marry him, he would’ve gone, but she didn’t. At the end of the day, no matter how much Gus and Call disagreed, they still chose each other. For weeks, Gus called Call crazy for continuing the journey to Montana without knowing what they’d find, but he still laid down his life to get them there and honestly, he came around to the idea and started riding for it harder than Call did. There’s a balance in that relationship that only works because of how deeply loyal they are to one another.

“It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.”

One of the most interesting things about this book is that it’s one of the first “American classics” I’ve read where the author (everybody say thank you to Larry McMurtry) fully fleshes out his female characters. Lorena (and, to a slightly lesser degree, Clara) is explored just as deeply as the men, which makes it easy to see why this book resonates with so many female readers.

Lorena is dealt a bad hand in life. She moves from one abusive situation to another and eventually ends up in Lonesome Dove as a sex worker, all while dreaming of something better. Really, everything she’s endured has been in pursuit of a better life. So when Jake Spoon rolls in and sweet-talks her with promises of San Francisco (much like he does with Call) it makes perfect sense that she would take that chance. From the outside, it might look like she’s blinded by love, but I see it more as a woman who has had no control over her life finally seeing a way out. A chance to live the life she’s always wanted. In a way, she embodies what everyone in the book is chasing: a new life they’ve imagined for themselves, despite the fear of being disappointed when they finally get there. It’s in this characterization where I see why Gus loves her and Call similarly: they both have determination.

“If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.”

As they head north, Jake starts to get… aggressive. He’s a gambler with a drinking problem, and with nowhere to indulge those habits, he takes it out on the only person around: Lorena. He picks fights, but she brushes him off, trying to keep her distance. Eventually, after another falling out, Jake leaves her to go gamble in a nearby town. Gus and Call hear about it and arrange for the ranch hands to watch over her in shifts, but one night Newt (Call’s son though Newt doesn’t know that) falls asleep on watch and wakes to find her gone. She’s been kidnapped by Blue Duck, an old enemy from Gus and Call’s Ranger days.

What follows for Lorena is brutal. She experiences unimaginable horrors at the hands of her captors before Gus eventually rescues her. From then on her storyline is dramatically changed as we, as the reader, now follow her as she adjusts back into the journey while suffering from PTSD.

Back to Jake Spoon… tsk, tsk, tsk.
takes drag of cigarette
Good riddance.

I’ll admit, I cheered a little. This man has been up to no good since he entered the narrative. His ideas set this entire odyssey in motion, but he spends most of the book coasting on charm, convinced he can talk his way in and out of anything. And for a while, he does, but not forever. In the end, he can’t sweet-talk his way out of consequences.

One last thing before I get off my soapbox: the contrast between Gus and Call's approach to horse thieves. When Gus and Call encounter Native riders who had stolen horses because they were in need, Gus and Call offer them another horse because they understand that the Native tribe would die without one. Jake stole horses because of the gang he was riding with wanted to for the thrill of it and ended up killing innocent people along the way. When Gus and Call catch up to him, he and his gang are prosecuted. At the end of the day (and thankfully) Jake Spoon could not charm his way out of a noose.

The best part is, I haven’t even scratched the surface of how much depth there is here—how many characters there are to know and care about. An honorable mention goes to Deets. His ending was the first one that really hurt, and he was such a compelling character to follow.

I don’t know if I’ll ever read anything that quite matches this. I wasn’t even halfway through before I was already calling it my favorite book.

“Live through it,” Call said. “That’s all we can do.”