Duane's Depressed (Paperback)

Larry McMurtry's "funny and brutal" (New York Times) landmark novel The Last Picture Show introduced the shrinking oil-patch town of Thalia, Texas, and its teenaged residents Duane, Sonny, and Jacy. In Texasville, the trio grew up to "adultery and madness, bankruptcy and boom times," (New York Daily News). Now McMurtry takes his most colorful characters into their twilight years -- in an unforgettable end to the Thalia saga.

Surrounded by his children, all of whom are going through tumultuous transitional times; his promiscuous wife, Karla, who is with her own demons; and his friend Sonny, who seems to be dying, Duane can't make sense of his life anymore. The stark realization that he has spent his whole life in a miserable dust-bowl town throws him into a protracted end-of-life crisis -- one that will hurtle him toward unexpected love, profoundly affect old friends, and cause him to embark on outlandish new beginning.

McMurtry's strongest and most appealing contemporary novel since Terms of Endearment, Duane's Depressed is utterly unsentimental, often hilarious, sometimes tragic and shocking, and in the end full of hope.