Step out of back-to-school miniseries and suck down this 800 plus page behemoth. And how couldn’t you when you’re entering a world where gunfights start at the drop of a hat, a world of liquor and saloons, cattle and plains, whores and cowboys, Indians and settlers, all making and breaking their destinies on a frontier we Oklahomans take for granted in our air conditioning and highways. Step out of the ordinary and visit the frontier as it once was –wild and dangerous, a place where men died as suddenly as a Texas dust storm.

Enter a world of love and heartbreak, where problems aren’t easily solved. Meet characters that will make you laugh, smile, and cry. This is “Lonesome Dove,” Larry McMurtry’s western masterpiece, and it will not disappoint.

“Lonesome Dove” is a fictional South Texan town situated on the Rio Grande. It is home of good guys Woodrow Call, the solemn, silent captain, the witty Augustus McCrae, the easygoing Joshua Deets, whose stories course across a western landscape more lush than any I’ve ever read. Meet gambler and ladies man Jake Spoon, and meet Lorena, the whore with a heart for San Francisco. Meet the young Newt as he comes of age on the western plains, as he learns about friendship, loss, and wetting his carrot (almost).

“Lonesome Dove” is full of its baddies, too, like the evil Blue Duck, a Comanche whose pillage, rape and plunder stops for no one, and the Sluggs, a bad trio of brothers who kill people in ways that would make even Hitler wince. Be charmed by minor characters such as cook Po Campo, the singing Irish O’Brien brothers and fiery Dish Bogget, who has the misfortune of falling in love with a woman who doesn’t care one bit for him.

Even if the western genre induces you into automatic vomit mode, read “Lonesome Dove.” Even if you’ve never read a book more than 200 pages, read “Lonesome Dove.” Even if you don’t read books, period, read “Lonesome Dove.” It didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize for being vomit-inducing, I promise you.

“Lonesome Dove” is the most memorable western ever written (and I’m not the only one who says that), not because of its genre, but because of its characters. Why do you think I spent most of this review talking about them? Like any good book, characters drive the story with the same determination they drive their cattle over a thousand miles from South Texas to Montana.

I won’t reveal any more plot details to whet your appetite further, because I don’t have to. Larry McMurtry’s characters will do that for me. The spell they cast today is just as powerful as when the book was first published in 1985. I recommend it without reservation.