Master storyteller Larry McMurtry unfurls a short, bright banner of a book following the fortunes of the Cecil family as they travel from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to the Western frontier. Though the story is narrated by her oldest son, 15-year-old Shay, the real hero of the book is Mary Margaret, the mother. Her husband, Dick, has left her and their four children in Boone's Lick while he seeks his fortunes in the West. Mary Margaret lives contentedly with the children and Dick's brother, Seth, until one day she decides she's had enough of playing the estranged wife and packs up the entire household. And so the Cecil family leaves their little town (where Wild Bill Hickok makes a cameo appearance) and travels by wagon to Wyoming, accompanied along the way by a fat Québecois priest and a Shoshone. They do find Dick, and they also arrive in Wyoming just in time for the 1866 Fetterman Massacre.

McMurtry writes with an ease that younger writers would do well to emulate. Here Seth fights off an ambush of white trash dastards: Uncle Seth fired again and a third horse went down--though just saying it went down would be to put it too mildly. The third horse turned a complete somersault. Its rider flew off about thirty feet, after which he didn't move. "'It's rare to see a horse turn a flip like that,' Uncle Seth observed." That cool "observed" gives an idea of the book's wry, pervasive humor. But there's more here than shooting and quipping: McMurtry's wagon full of frustrated Missourians makes a fine narrative vehicle: we get a first-hand account of the Native American wars; we get the perspective of the women left behind in the opening of the West; we get a wagon's-eye view of the hard journey of the settlers; and, ultimately, we get an insightful family romance. All that, and scalpings too. --Claire Dederer


From Publishers Weekly
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. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
This book is more like LONESOME DOVE than its prequel or its sequel, but much shorter. We see classic post-bellum McMurtry characters struggling with bucolic conflicts and imparting their colloquial wisdoms. Will Patton lays the rural accent on so thick you can feel yourself being dragged away to the Appalachians. Each character has a different voice and accent, making a zany performance of a zany story. Grandpa talks louder than anyone else, so we are sure he is a bit deaf. The match between the story and the reader provides good fun. J.A.H. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
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. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
The New York Times Book Review This is McMurtry at his best.


Book Description
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.


About the Author
Larry McMurtry, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is the author of twenty-three novels, two collections of essays, two memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, and is the editor of a collection of short stories of the modern west. He lives in Archer City, Texas.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Larry McMurtry returns to the settings and themes of his most beloved classics -- Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, and Comanche Moon -- with Boone's Lick, a novel of the 19th-century American West inspired by the real story of the Cecil clan. As Mary Margaret Cecil undertakes to find her wandering husband, making her way from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, with her family in tow, the struggle between white settlers and Native Americans enters its decisive phase, and the Cecils find that their history -- and their fate -- is inextricably linked to that of the Indians.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Boone's Lick is a major novel in the rich tradition of Lonesome Dove and Comanche Moon about the opening up of the American West, by its most distinguished fiction writer. It is the story of a trek, by riverboat and wagon, from Boone's Lick, Missouri to Fort Phil Kearney in Wyoming. The trekkers are the Cecil Family: Ma (Mary Margaret); Rosie (half-sister); Seth (brother of Ma's husband Dick); Shay, G.T., and Neva (teenagers); and baby Marcy and Granpa Crackenthorpe, accompanied most of the way by a priest (Father Villy) and a Snake Indian (Charlie Seven Days).

The object of the trek is to find Dick Cecil, a wagoner and freight hauler; and the reason his wife Mary Margaret wants to find him is to inform him that she's leaving him. In fact, she's leaving him for Seth, his brother, who has been her mainstay all along. After many adventures, Mary Margaret does find Dick and does tell him off, at Fort Phil Kearney - on what turns out to be the eve of the Fetterman Massacre (December 21, 1886), which provides the climax of one of Larry McMurtry's richest and most satisfying novels.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine

In contrast to the epic sweep of the Lonesome Dove cycle, McMurtry's return to the dusty trails of the Old West is more of an elegy—compact in construction, graceful in tone, with a simplicity of expression that belies its thematic depth. Narrating the novel is fifteen-year-old Sherman "Shay" Cecil, the oldest son of a strong-willed mother and a father who has all but abandoned the family. Impoverished in Boone's Lick, Missouri, they embark on a pilgrimage to find the father, knowing that he isn't likely to welcome the reunion. Though the story initially recycles some cliches (in addition to a gratuitous appearance by Wild Bill Hickok there's the inevitable inclusion of a whore with a heart of gold), it finds its footing as it heads for the frontier. Along the way, Shay discovers essential truths about love, fate and chance, and the unexpected ways things fit together. The more he learns about his mother and his relatives, the better he understands himself. As Shay explains, "It was such unfamiliar territory that I could not even be sure I knew the difference between a big thing and a little thing..." As McMurtry recognizes, the little things are where the big things reveal themselves. —Don McLeese

Publishers Weekly

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 Cecils--Mary Margaret; her brother-in-law, Seth; four children; half-sister Rosie; and Granpa Crackenthorpe--are 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-obvious--and surprisingly romantic--motivation 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. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

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 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

This book is more like LONESOME DOVE than its prequel or its sequel, but much shorter. We see classic post-bellum McMurtry characters struggling with bucolic conflicts and imparting their colloquial wisdoms. Will Patton lays the rural accent on so thick you can feel yourself being dragged away to the Appalachians. Each character has a different voice and accent, making a zany performance of a zany story. Grandpa talks louder than anyone else, so we are sure he is a bit deaf. The match between the story and the reader provides good fun. J.A.H. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Karen Karbo - New York Times Book Review