Boone's Lick

Boone's Lick is a major novel in the rich tradition of Lonesome Dove and Comanche Moon about the opening up of the American West, by its most distinguished fiction writer. It is the story of a trek, by riverboat and wagon, from Boone's Lick, Missouri to Fort Phil Kearney in Wyoming. The trekkers are the Cecil Family: Ma (Mary Margaret); Rosie (half-sister); Seth (brother of Ma's husband Dick); Shay, G.T., and Neva (teenagers); and baby Marcy and Granpa Crackenthorpe, accompanied most of the way by a priest (Father Villy) and a Snake Indian (Charlie Seven Days).

The object of the trek is to find Dick Cecil, a wagoner and freight hauler; and the reason his wife Mary Margaret wants to find him is to inform him that she's leaving him. In fact, she's leaving him for Seth, his brother, who has been her mainstay all along. After many adventures, Mary Margaret does find Dick and does tell him off, at Fort Phil Kearney - on what turns out to be the eve of the Fetterman Massacre (December 21, 1886), which provides the climax of one of Larry McMurtry's richest and most satisfying novels.