Wild About Larry

We're talking about Larry McMurtry, whose oeuvre is impressive (25 novels, 30 screenplays, plus essays and memoirs). He won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Lonesome Dove, thus establishing himself as the chronicler for the American West (the NYT called Dove "The Great Cowboy Novel"). McMurtry's latest bestseller, The Wandering Hill, is volume two of the four-part Berrybender Narratives (last year's Sin Killer was the first) and its action, too, takes place in the West during the 1800s. Simon & Schuster's first printing was 170,000.

With reporting by Dick Donahue