What do You think about Boone's Lick (2002)?
I don't often read westerns but every once in a while will pick one up. This is a fairly traditional one, and I liked how McMurty wove historical fact into what is mostly a purely fictional tale. He gives you a nice slice of reality with this very flawed family, such that the reader can see monogamy wasn't the sacred cow we'd like to think it was way back when. The dangers of traveling into Indian territory are revealed, along with the effects of indiscriminate killing of wild herds of whatever animal you care to name.Mary Margaret Cecil and her daughter Neva are two strong and independently minded women, and I liked that. The banter throughout was fun to read.
—Cornmaven
This saga of the Cecil family is narrated by the oldest son, Sherman, Shay for short. The family is dominated by Mary Margaret, Shay’s mother. After living in Boone’s Lick, Missouri for 14 years and having her husband, Dick, only drop in every other year or two for a couple of days leaving her pregnant, she tires of the situation. She decides to go look for her husband who is working for the army in the Wyoming Territory. She packs up her home, three children plus a baby, her father, her brother-in-law, and at the last minute her half sister who is Boone’s resident whore and goes after Dick. It is 1875 and the Indians on the Great Plains are an unhappy lot. It is about the time of the last of the great Indian wars (just before Custer’s last stand in 1875) The family has many adventures on their journey west.
—Marty
Boone's Lick is a backwater town in Missouri . The setting is the American West during the Civil War. Mary Margaret Cecil and her growing family are living off the land the best they can. Her husband Dickie is a supplier for the forts of the US Army and travels far and wide securing himself with an Indian wife and family at every fort on the Oregon Trail. Mary Margaret has had enough of his never-do-well ways and decides to pack up her family and her beloved brother-in-law, Uncle Seth, in a wagon and travel up the Missouri River to find her husband Dickie and put an end to his gallivanting ways. Along the way they procure an old Indian who guides them and a French traveling minister who sort of helps guide them. They lose old Grandpa Crackenthorpe in a storm, they meet several bands of Indians, including Pawnee, Comanche, Sioux, and the terrifying Blackfoot, as well as three Indian families of Dickie's. When they finally reach Wyoming and find "Pa", Mary Margaret delivers him his walking papers. Among the characters are the shy but ambitious son Shay, his tempered brother G.T., their fearless little sister Neva, baby Marcy, Mary Margaret or "Ma", crazy and delusional Grandpa Crackenthorpe, the family caretaker Uncle Seth, Ma's whore sister Aunt Rosie, Wild Bill Hickok, Sheriff Baldy Stone, the all-knowing Indian Charlie Seven Days, father Pere Villy, and the infamous Dick Cecil himself. This book is so humorous, I found myself giggling at every turn of a page. The frontier life and Civil War era is luring to me and I enjoyed it very much. Larry McMurtry is at his very best and cannot be out-written when it comes to westerns. The book was published in 2000 by Simon & Schuster Inc. Go get it right away, you won't be sorry!
—Shelly
