I’ve just finished reading Lonesome Dove. Again. Though technically a reread, it felt startlingly fresh – like coming back to a place you used to know but seeing it in a different light. It hit me harder than I expected.
Some novels haunt. Others entertain. Lonesome Dove does both, with a vastness that’s hard to put into words. It’s a story that spans thousands of miles and even more emotional terrain. And despite its 850-plus pages, it rarely drags. Larry McMurtry pulls us along with wit and grit, and a deep affection for his characters – all of whom feel maddeningly, painfully real.
The novel follows a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, but the journey serves merely as a framework. At the heart of it are Captain Gus McCrae and Captain Woodrow F. Call – two former Texas Rangers bound by decades of friendship and mutual exasperation. Gus, charming and irreverent, quotes Latin between drinks and mischief. Call, stoic and gravel-voiced, speaks in actions rather than words. Together, they carry the weight of the narrative and of the past.
And then there is the land itself. The grand sweep from Texas plains to Montana mountains is not just a backdrop but a restless presence in the novel. McMurtry writes it with an unsentimental eye – brutal heat, sudden storms, rivers that can drown, deserts that can starve, and skies so vast they feel almost indifferent to human struggle.
The cattle drive is a battle not only against distance but against a wilderness that tests resolve and remakes those who cross it. The frontier is both promise and punishment, and in many ways it becomes the novel’s most enduring character.
As the story unfolds, we lose characters we’ve come to love as we travel with them across this shifting, often hostile landscape. The journey throws all that it has at them – bitter trials, hard choices, and the unflinching realities of the West. As the cattle drive progresses, people get lost along the way.
The deaths feel sudden, unsentimental, devastating, not because of melodrama, but because of how matter-of-factly McMurtry lets them happen. There’s no cushioning, no grand farewell. Just loss, and the long road ahead. It is a testament to the writing, to how McMurtry breathed life into these characters, those with bit parts and others who dominate the novel, that all are felt.
It’s been said that McMurtry loosely based the novel on the lives of Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving, the cattlemen behind the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Maybe that’s why the book feels so grounded, so lived-in. It carries not just the dust of history, but the ache of lives worn into the land.
Lonesome Dove was made into an Emmy-winning television mini-series in 1989, starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones – and if you’ve not seen it, it’s well worth a watch. If you’re craving more after finishing the novel, you’re in luck. McMurtry wrote three companion novels: Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon, and Streets of Laredo. Together, they form a loosely connected quartet charting the full arc of these characters’ lives.
Rereading Lonesome Dove, and thinking about its epic nature made me wonder, and ultimately ponder this this question:
Where are the epic novels now?
And by epic, I don’t just mean long. I mean books that dare to be big. Stories with sweeping landscapes and tangled relationships and a cast of characters who grow and fail and fight and break your heart a little. Novels that stretch across decades, that leave you changed.
They do still exist – though they seem quieter now, hidden behind flashier trends or shelved under vague categories like “literary fiction” or “historical saga.” But for readers still hungry for a long, satisfying story that sprawls and grips and lingers, here are a few epic novels worth losing yourself in:
Epic Novels That Still Deliver
The Classics (Old but Gold)
“You only have one life. Why not try for everything?”
A richly immersive tale set in 17th-century Japan, where a shipwrecked Englishman becomes embroiled in feudal politics and forbidden romance. As intense as it is expansive. Recently adapted into a brilliant new TV mini-series that brings its world vividly to life.
The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye
“There are some kinds of hunger that a crust of bread won’t satisfy.”
A sweeping saga set in colonial India, following a British officer raised as Indian royalty. A heady mix of love, identity, war, and history – page-turning and profound.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
A generational story of two families in California’s Salinas Valley, echoing the Cain and Abel myth. Steinbeck’s magnum opus – tender, tragic, and morally resonant.
“You too will marry a boy I choose,” said Mrs Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger daughter.
At over 1,300 pages, this post-Partition Indian novel is a slow, sprawling feast of politics, poetry, matchmaking and social change. For patient readers, it’s deeply rewarding.
And then the Modern Epics (For the 21st Century Reader)
The Overstory by Richard Powers
“The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”
An environmental epic where trees are the real protagonists, binding together seemingly unrelated human lives. Quietly radical and deeply moving.
“History is storytelling.”
A multi-generational journey through the African diaspora, starting with two sisters in 18th-century Ghana. Bold in structure, piercing in emotion.
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
“A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past.”
Set during New Zealand’s 1860s gold rush, this literary mystery is intricately plotted and steeped in Victorian style. Dense, dazzling, and worth the effort.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
“The secret of the threshold is that it’s both boundary and invitation.”
A lush, lyrical family saga set in Kerala, India, spanning decades of faith, illness, and quiet endurance. Verghese writes with the sweep of García Márquez and the tenderness of a village doctor.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it.”
Set in post–Civil War Barcelona, this literary mystery entwines books, love, politics, and obsession. Lushly atmospheric, it unfolds like a gothic fairytale laced with noir.
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
“Nothing is over. Nothing. That’s what she didn’t know. You can’t ever get away.”
Based on the life of Erdrich’s grandfather, this multi-perspective novel explores Native American identity, community, and political resistance in 1950s North Dakota. Quietly epic and deeply rooted.
Maybe epics feel rarer these days because we’re all so pressed for time. Or maybe we’ve forgotten the pleasure of getting truly lost in a book. The kind of story that doesn’t just fill the hours, but alters how you see the world.
If you’ve found one recently – something sprawling and strange and unforgettable – do tell. I’m always looking for the next long road worth travelling.
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