The Last Kind Words Saloon

This is Larry McMurtry's ballad in prose: his heartfelt tribute to a bygone era of the American West. In his final novel, he returns to the vivid and unsparing portrait of the nineteenth-century and cowboy lifestyle made so memorable in his classic Lonesome Dove.

Long Grass, Texas. Once hailed as heroes for their days of subduing drunks in Abilene and Dodge – more often with a mean look than a pistol – the taciturn Wyatt Earp now idles away his time between bottles, while the dentist-turned-gunslinger Doc Holliday is more adept at poker than extracting teeth. With the buffalo herds gone, the Comanche defeated, and vast swaths of the Great Plains enclosed by cattle ranches, Wyatt and Doc live on, even as the storied West that forged their myths disappears.

McMurtry traces their rich and varied friendship from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver to Tombstone, Arizona to the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral, rendered here in his stark and peerless prose. As harsh and beautiful, and as brutal and captivating as the open range it depicts, The Last Kind Words Saloon celebrates the genius of one of the most original American writers.

Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.