The Desert Rose

Description

FROM PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR LARRY MCMURTRY "Larry MacMurtry is one of American literature's native treasures" Boston Herald Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry writes novels set in the American Heartland. But his real territory is the heart itself. His gift for writing about women - their love for their reckless, hopeless men, their ability to see the good in losers, and their peculiar combination of emotional strength and sudden weakness - makes The Desert Rose the bittersweet, funny, and touching book that it is. Harmony is a Las Vegas showgirl. At night she's a lead dancer in a gambling casino; during the day she raises peacocks. She's one of a dying breed of dancers, faced with fewer and fewer jobs and an even bleaker future. Yet she maintains a calm cheerfulness in that arid neon landscape of supermarkets, drive-in wedding chapels, and all-night casinos. While Harmony's star is fading, her beautiful, cynical daughter Pepper's is on the rise. But Harmony remains wistful and optimistic through it all. She is the unexpected blossom in the wasteland, the tough and tender desert rose. Hers is a loving portrait that only Larry McMurtry could render. PRAISE FOR LARRY MCMURTRY "Sad and sweet yet rigorously unsentimental. Mr McMurtry has the power to clutch the heart and also somehow to exhilarate." New Yorker

Larry McMurtry is the author of more than thirty novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. He has also written memoirs and essays, and received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on Brokeback Mountain.

Warm and funny . . . The real triumph of the book is Harmony herself, an unabashed romantic whose optimism and tenderness refuse to wilt in this arid, unromantic setting . . . McMurtry can transform ordinary words into highly lyrical, poetic passages . . . and presents human dramas with a sympathy and compassion that make us care about his characters in ways that most novelists can't * The Los Angeles Times * Sad and sweet yet rigorously unsentimental. Mr McMurtry has the power to clutch the heart and also somehow to exhilarate * New Yorker * The astounding thing about Harmony . . . is that she really does have a heart of gold, and despite everything, she is wholly believable, oddly moving, even lovable * Publishers Weekly * It is quite impossible not to fall in love with Harmony while reading The Desert Rose. . . It is unquestionably one of his best novels . . . The Desert Rose is, in a quite unassuming way, a beautiful little book * The Washington Post Book World *