Larry McMurtry: A Life

In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as the Great Plains' keenest witness since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Daugherty traces his origins as one of the last American writers who had direct contact with this country's pioneer traditions. He follows McMurtry's career as a bestselling novelist and Pulitzer-Prize winner, and shows how life as a nomad, immersing himself in a world of bookshops and movie theaters, helped McMurtry learn the rhythms of narrative. Themes of loss, and the need to fill the hollowness, made McMurtry more than the mere purveyor of cowboy myths that many considered him to be. -- adapted from jacket, first chapter, and publisher info