Telegraph Days

March 6, 2006
McMurtry's latest skips through western lore with a wry smile. Marie Antoinette "Nellie" Courtright and her brother, Jackson, bereft of family after their Virginia clan dies off one by one, arrive in Rita Blanca in 1876, in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle, to remake themselves. Jackson is made a deputy sheriff and Nellie takes over the telegraph office. In short order, Jackson shoots down an entire gang of outlaws, and Nellie promptly writes it up to launch a lucrative literary career. Other adventures await: she becomes manager of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, boldly faces down Jesse James's attempt to rob her and witnesses the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. She becomes mayor of Rita Blanca, a mother of six and, later, friends with Lillian Gish and William B. Mayer. Beautiful and sexually insatiable, Nellie is a witty, sophisticated, accomplished, cunning, impudent and highly improbable woman—more than a match for any man she meets, which isn't saying much, since they're all idiots. She also is little more than a reworking of several previous McMurtry heroines, especially The Berrybender Narratives'
Tasmin. This tale is contrived, episodic and lacks cohesion, and its constant comedy is self-conscious. But most readers won't be able to help cracking a smile over McMurtry's 38th book, as purposely over-the-top as an episode of South Park
.

April 1, 2006
Once considered minor gentry in Virginia, 22-year-old Nellie Courtright and her brother, Jackson, are now all that remain of their family after an ill-fated journey out West. A dusty town on the plains called Rita Blanca becomes the Courtrights' new home. Nellie takes a job as a lickety-split telegraph operator, and her brother becomes the sheriff's deputy. When he single-handedly takes down the notorious Yazee gang, Nellie scribbles a booklet about the gunfight, becoming an author. Soon she meets Buffalo Bill Cody, and because Nellie strikes him as organized, he offers her a job overseeing his many businesses while he runs around the country producing his Wild West Show. Nellie's amorous adventures are many, and the novel is peppered with sudden couplings. Sassing her way through a series of sometimes improbable adventures that just happen to put her in the middle of famous moments in history, Nellie proves herself irresistible. Although not as epic as" Lonesome Dove", "Telegraph Days" surely seems of the same vintage -good news for the legions of McMurtry fans. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/15/06.]" -Keddy Ann Outlaw, Harris Cty. P.L., Houston"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2006
In his latest novel, McMurtry returns to his familiar theme of the mythology versus the reality of the West. Here the closing decades of the western frontier are viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright, who is likely to endure as one of McMurtry's most memorable and endearing heroines. As a young, orphaned girl in her early twenties, Nellie finds work as a telegraph operator in the tiny town of Rita Blanca, situated in the "no man's land" that eventually became Oklahoma. She witnesses a gunfight in which her younger brother, by pure luck, wipes out a gang of notorious outlaws. When she decides to pen a dime novel recounting the event, it launches an odyssey during which she encounters many of the icons of frontier lore. She carries on a decades-long platonic relationship with Buffalo Bill. She has repeated encounters with a surly Wyatt Earp, and she witnesses the gunfight at the OK Corral. When the frontier closes, she carves out a new life as owner of a California newspaper. This rollicking epic is filled with excitement and humor, tinged with sadness and a longing for the past. In his striving to demythologize the West, McMurtry's vision of the reality is compelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)