"Lonesome Dove," by Larry McMurtry, the author of "Terms of Endearment," is his long-awaited masterpiece, the major novel at last of the American West as it really was.

A love story, an adventure, an American epic, "Lonesome Dove" embraces "all" the West -- legend and fact, heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settiers -- in a novel that recreates the central American experience, the most enduring of our national myths.

Set in the late nineteenth century, "Lonesome Dove" is the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana -- and much more. It is a drive that represents for everybody involved not only a daring, even a foolhardy, adventure, but a part of the American Dream -- the attempt to carve out