The Late Child

An unforgettable addition to his widely acclaimed body of work, The Late Child is Larry McMurtry's tender, funny, and poignant sequel to The Desert Rose. McMurtry delivers another rich cast of characters — and a heartfelt, bittersweet story that unfolds on the open road, in one woman's search for strength, understanding, and hope.

Harmony is the optimistic, resilient Las Vegas ex-showgirl who returns home one day to the news that her beloved daughter has died, in New York, of AIDS. She manages to stay afloat, buoyed by her precocious five-year-old son, Eddie, and her two outspoken sisters as they set forth on a journey across the country, seeking answers about her daughter's death. From Nevada to New York to Oklahoma, the eccentrics Harmony and her entourage meet nudge them closer to an inner peace with life, and a way to find hope in the future. Alive with inventive storytelling and honest emotion, The Late Child is a warm, enriching experience that celebrates the unique relationship between mother and child.

A sequel to The Desert Rose, this book continues the heartfelt story of one of McMurtry's most unforgettable characters, former showgirl Harmony, in what "may be teh best pure love story he has written"(Ronald Reed, Fort Worth Star-Telegram).

Harmony is the optimistic, resilient Las Vegas ex-showgirl who returns from work at a Las Vegas recycling plant one day to discover that her beautiful, beloved daughter, Pepper, has died of AIDS. In an effort to right herself and come to grips with her loss, Harmony leaves for New York City with her five-year-old son Eddie and her two quarrelsome sisters, Neddie and Pat, to seek out Pepper's girlfriend - and to find a way to understand and accept Pepper's death. At once an odyssey sending its characters on a journey across America - from Las Vegas to New York, to the White House, to rural Oklahoma - and a story of loss and recovery, The Late Child is McMurtry at his best. Along the way, we meet a host of engaging characters: a teenage hooker and her boyfriend, Sonny Le Song; Omar, Abdul and Salah, three Indian taxi entrepreneurs; and a dog named Iggy, who becomes a national celebrity and gets to meet the President of the United States. The eccentricities of these people are dwarfed by Harmony's family when Harmony, Eddie and Iggy make it to the Oklahoma panhandle. Having come to understand that hers are not the only human expectations to fail and that there is hope for the future, if only in the next generation, Harmony finally arrives home.

Publishers Weekly

McMurtry's bittersweet 19th novel marks the welcome return of Harmony, the navely optimistic showgirl from The Desert Rose (1983). Now 47, Harmony is working in a Las Vegas recycling plant, retired from her reign as the most beautiful showgirl ever seen on the Strip (she dated Elvis and Sinatra, but slept only with Dan Duryea). Harmony's relentlessly hopeful take on life is shattered when she receives a letter from New York City explaining that her dancer daughter, Pepper, has died of AIDS. Not even the arrival of her sisters, Neddie and Pat (the latter a veteran of three trips to Masters and Johnson for sex addiction) can ease her overwhelming anguish. Fearing that grief might literally drive her insane, Harmony packs all her possessions into a U-Haul and, with her sisters and her precocious five-year-old son, Eddie, begins the drive home to Tarwater, Okla. Along the way, Eddie rescues an abandoned dog-whom they christen ``Iggy Pop''-from a Hopi reservation, and the U-Haul is destroyed in a fall into the Canyon de Chelly. This necessitates a detour to New York City, where the group is carried off to the seedy No-Tel Motel in Jersey City by three Arab-immigrant hustlers. They meet Pepper's female lover, temporarily adopt a homeless teenage hooker and visit the Statue of Liberty, where Iggy Pop survives disaster with a seagull and makes the cover of People magazine. When Harmony finally makes her way to Tarwater, she finds her family laden with troubles so perilous she must turn her grief to strength if she's to save them and herself. Raucous, unexpected and downright quirky, this is McMurtry at his powerful best. BOMC alternate. (May)

Larry McMurtry worked as a cowhand on his father's Texas cattle ranch until he was 22, but never aspired to be a rancher. Instead, he published his first novel, Horseman, Pass By, when he was just 25. More than two dozen novels later, there's still more to McMurtry than a typical western.