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Boone's Lick: A Novel
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Simon & Schuster 2010
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Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's return to the kind of story that made him famous -- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century west. Like his bestsellers Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man's Walk, Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else.

Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down her elusive husband, Dick, to tell him she's leaving him. Without knowing precisely where he is, they set out across the plains in search of him, encountering grizzly bears, stormy weather, and hostile Indians as they go. With them are Shay's siblings, G.T., Neva, and baby Marcy; Shay's uncle, Seth; his Granpa Crackenthorpe; and Mary Margaret's beautiful half-sister, Rose. During their journey they pick up a barefooted priest named Father Villy, and a Snake Indian named Charlie Seven Days, and persuade them to join in their travels.

At the heart of the novel, and the adventure, is Mary Margaret, whom we first meet shooting a sheriff's horse out from underneath him in order to feed her family. Forceful, interesting, and determined, she is written with McMurtry's trademark deftness and sympathy for women, and is in every way a match for the worst the west can muster.

Boone's Lick abounds with the incidents, the excitements, and the dangers of life on the plains. Its huge cast of characters includes such historical figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the unfortunate Colonel Fetterman (whose arrogance and ineptitude led to one of the U.S. Army's worst and bloodiest defeats at the hands of the Cheyenne and Sioux) as well as the Cecil family (itself based on a real family of nineteenth-century traders and haulers).

The story of their trek in pursuit of Dick, and the discovery of his second and third families, is told with brilliance, humor, and overwhelming joie de vivre in a novel that is at once high adventure, a perfect western tale, and a moving love story -- it is, in short, vintage McMurtry, combining his brilliant character portraits, his unerring sense of the west, and his unrivaled eye for the telling detail.

Boone's Lick is one of McMurtry's richest works of fiction to date.

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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
06/01/2010
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781439140932
ASIN:
B003NHR7QW
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APA Citation (style guide)

Larry McMurtry. (2010). Boone's Lick: A Novel. Simon & Schuster.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Larry McMurtry. 2010. Boone's Lick: A Novel. Simon & Schuster.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Larry McMurtry, Boone's Lick: A Novel. Simon & Schuster, 2010.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Larry McMurtry. Boone's Lick: A Novel. Simon & Schuster, 2010.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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fullDescription

Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's return to the kind of story that made him famous -- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century west. Like his bestsellers Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man's Walk, Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else.

Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down her elusive husband, Dick, to tell him she's leaving him. Without knowing precisely where he is, they set out across the plains in search of him, encountering grizzly bears, stormy weather, and hostile Indians as they go. With them are Shay's siblings, G.T., Neva, and baby Marcy; Shay's uncle, Seth; his Granpa Crackenthorpe; and Mary Margaret's beautiful half-sister, Rose. During their journey they pick up a barefooted priest named Father Villy, and a Snake Indian named Charlie Seven Days, and persuade them to join in their travels.

At the heart of the novel, and the adventure, is Mary Margaret, whom we first meet shooting a sheriff's horse out from underneath him in order to feed her family. Forceful, interesting, and determined, she is written with McMurtry's trademark deftness and sympathy for women, and is in every way a match for the worst the west can muster.

Boone's Lick abounds with the incidents, the excitements, and the dangers of life on the plains. Its huge cast of characters includes such historical figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the unfortunate Colonel Fetterman (whose arrogance and ineptitude led to one of the U.S. Army's worst and bloodiest defeats at the hands of the Cheyenne and Sioux) as well as the Cecil family (itself based on a real family of nineteenth-century traders and haulers).

The story of their trek in pursuit of Dick, and the discovery of his second and third families, is told with brilliance, humor, and overwhelming joie de vivre in a novel that is at once high adventure, a perfect western tale, and a moving love story -- it is, in short, vintage McMurtry, combining his brilliant character portraits, his unerring sense of the west, and his unrivaled eye for the telling detail.

Boone's Lick is one of McMurtry's richest works of fiction to date.

reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: The New York Times Book Review
      • content: McMurtry at his best: colloquial, poetic, gently elegiac.
      • premium: False
      • source: David HendricksSan Antonio Express-News
      • content: McMurtry once again takes his readers on a vivid, unforgettable journey through the Old West....Each page has some insight or twist that can pierce a reader's soul.
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        October 30, 2000
        Putting to rest the notion that with Duane's Depressed he had written his last novel, Pulitzer Prize-winner McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) launches a new series with this whimsical adventure set between Missouri and the wilderness of Wyoming. The CecilsDMary Margaret; her brother-in-law, Seth; four children; half-sister Rosie; and Granpa CrackenthorpeDare weary of waiting 14 months for Mary's husband, Dick, to return from his work as a wagoner in Wyoming while they starve in Civil War-ravaged Missouri. The family decide to travel up the Platte River to find the wayward Dick. Outspoken Mary Margaret, a sturdy matriarch, has a less-obviousDand surprisingly romanticDmotivation for embarking on the journey. Seth, a veteran of the Union army and experienced frontiersman, provides a typical McMurtry male foil to a strong female lead, expressing both rustic wisdom and bewilderment. After a brief and violent adventure with the remains of a bushwhacking gang (and an encounter with Wild Bill Hickok), the family members combat harsh winter weather and fear of Indians as they trek upriver to locate Dick. Narrated by teenage Shay, the novel is reminiscent of McMurtry's lighter fiction (Somebody's Darling; Cadillac Jack; The Late Child). Shay's guileless tone and McMurtry's patented stylistic use of humorous understatement, non sequitur, misunderstanding and misdirection deflect graphic violence, intolerable hardship and even the death of major characters. More an amusing fable of family strife than a serious story with memorable characters, this piece does not approach the substance or quality of McMurtry's better works, but his ardent fans will undoubtedly appreciate the warmth, compassion and humor that the narrative exudes. Agent, Andrew Wylie. 300,000 first printing; BOMC, Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild alternates.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        Starred review from October 15, 2000
        Mary Margaret Cecil has lived in Boone's Lick, MO, for more than 15 years, with her children, her elderly father, and her brother-in-law, Seth. Periodically, her wayward husband, a freight hauler on the Bozeman Trail, visits just long enough to leave her pregnant and remorseful. Discontent with her lot, Mary Margaret marshals her family and sets off up the Missouri River by flatboat and across the plains to Wyoming in search of her husband to tell him that she is "quitting him." A wonderful road story in the tradition of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, although not nearly so prodigious, Boone's Lick has all the adventure of a classic Western--losing Grandpa to the river during a violent storm, racing against the onset of winter, burying the remains of Indian massacres--always pushing forward toward Wyoming. In December 1866, the family finally finds the errant Dick Cecil at Fort Phil Kearny, only to witness the historic Fetterman Massacre three days later. McMurtry's historical novel, told with humor and candor from the perspective of Mary Margaret's oldest son, Shay, is highly recommended for adults and adolescents alike.--Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

        Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        September 15, 2000
        McMurtry's latest novel will not only further endear him to his numerous fans but will also earn him even more devoted readers. He tells a delightfully engaging story as he follows the immediate travails but ultimate successes of a family brimming with strong, hard, and wild characters who reflect the strong, hard, and wild characters of the Old West in the last half of the nineteenth century. Ma Cecil lives a hardscrabble life in Boone's Lick, Missouri, with her children and her brother-in-law. Her husband, a freight hauler, has gone up the Missouri River to work, and Ma hasn't seen him in some months. She decides to load up her family and some tag-alongs and find Pa, to tell him it's all over between them; the journey the Cecils take, first by riverboat and then by mule-driven wagon, is the heart of this simple but atmospheric tale. They journey as far as Wyoming to meet up with Pa Cecil; when they find him, Ma "quits him," but before Ma and her little band of trekkers return to Missouri, they witness a horrible Indian massacre of army soldiers. How everyone in the story fares is laid out in a concluding chapter, much to the reader's satisfaction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)

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Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's return to the kind of story that made him famous -- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century west. Like his bestsellers Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man's Walk, Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else.

Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down her elusive husband, Dick, to tell him she's leaving him. Without knowing precisely where he is, they set out across the plains in search of him, encountering grizzly bears, stormy weather, and hostile Indians as they go. With them are Shay's siblings, G.T.,...

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