“Every line is poetry down and dirty in the mud, right where it belongs.” —
Publishers Weekly
A stunning literary debut,
Horseman, Pass By
(1961) exhibits the “full-blooded Western genius” (
) that would come to define McMurtry’s incomparable sensibility. In the dusty north Texas town of Thalia, young Lonnie Bannon quietly endures the pangs of maturity as a persistent rivalry between his grandfather and step-uncle, Hud, festers, and a deadly disease spreads among their cattle like wildfire.