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    Telegraph Days: A Novel
    Telegraph Days: A Novel
    Telegraph Days: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Telegraph Days: A Novel

    Written by Larry McMurtry

    Narrated by Annie Potts

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Winner of the 2007 Audie Award for Solo Narration—Female and Finalist for Fiction, Unabridged

    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove comes a big, brilliant, unputdownable saga of the Old West, told in the spunky courageous voice of a young woman named Nellie Courtright.

    When twenty-two-year-old Nellie Courtright and her teenage brother Jackson are unexpectedly orphaned by their father’s suicide on his new and unprosperous ranch, they make their way to the nearby town of Rita Blanca, where Jackson manages to secure a job as a sheriff's deputy, while Nellie, ever resourceful, becomes the town’s telegrapher.

    Together, they inadvertently put Rita Blanca on the map when young Jackson succeeds in shooting down all six of the ferocious Yazee brothers in a gunfight that brings him lifelong fame, but which he can never repeat because his success came purely out of luck.

    Propelled by her own energy and commonsense approach to life, Nellie meets and almost conquers the heart of Buffalo Bill, the man she will love most in her long life, and goes on to meet, and witness the exploits of, Billy the Kid, the Earp brothers, and Doc Holliday. She even gets a ringside seat at the Battle at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight in Western history, and eventually lives long enough to see the West and its gunfighters turned into movies.

    Full of life, love, shootouts, real Western heroes, and villains, Telegraph Days is Larry McMurtry at his epic best.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJun 5, 2006
    ISBN9780743565264
    Author

    Larry McMurtry

    Larry McMurtry (1936–2021) was the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, three memoirs, two collections of essays, and more than thirty screenplays. He lived in Archer City, Texas.

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    Reviews for Telegraph Days

    3.5/5

    187 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Famous gunslingers of the era, including Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, Gen. George Custer, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and the Earp brothers pepper the novel.Marie Antoinette Courtright (Nellie) is narrator and is no conventional heroine.Our story begins in Rita Blanca.Nellie is the telegrapher.....soon immortalized as the telegraph ladyShe goes on to be author and the organizational force of Bill Cody's Wild West Show, among other thingsNellie is a rogue in many ways, but certainly likeable enough.She wanders as her will takes her."Men are a constant in the novel...her choice----- what, when where and why."She lives off her wits, which are considerable in every situation"She ends up in California where she and husband Zenas (the longstanding beau among beaus) begin a successful newspaper and she becomes one of the most respected and powerful women in the stateThe novel covers the period from 1876 until about 1917 when one of her early screenplays is turned into a movie of her life."Nellie won't see The Telegraph Lady, the movie of her life.As her old friend Charlie Hepworth said, "Once is enough to live your life through, ain't it?"3.5 ★
    • 3/5
      This not your usual western novel. First the story is told through the eyes of a women- an outgoing woman who manages to meet nearly every famous personage in Western myth and history. She must have been a very attractive woman for almost every man wishes to or manages to sleep with her. Only Buffalo Bill Cody refused to do so to her great disappointment. Secondly, there is a much humour and frequent satire of the American Western myth which makes this a short and pleasant read.
    • 4/5
      Delightful! Larry McMurtry can always be counted on to entertain and he is without peer in delineating life in the American West, whether modern day or in the Old West."Telegraph Days" takes us back to the time of Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday & Wild Bill Hickock. Unlike most of McMurtry's tales of the Old West, this one is told through the eyes of a young woman. And a wise and lusty woman she is. Nellie Courtright gives this book its sizzle, for she far outshines all the big name historical characters who appear.A quick, fun read.
    • 3/5
      A very simply told tale of the West. Told from the perspective of young Marie-Antoinette Courtright, born in Virginia in a wealthy family, and taken west by her father "who had read too many brochures". When the story begins, her father has just hanged himself in the barn, and since the previous year has already brought 6 funerals, Nell and her brother are the only ones left. They move to the nearby town of Rita Bianca and their adventures begin. Billy the Kid, Buffolo Bill and the Wyatt brothers all make an appearance. The blurb says the book is "entertaining" - well, yes, I suppose, I finished it so it can't be too bad. But the writing is not only very matter of fact, but also very simplistic, with a kind of humour that should be dry but to me sounded very contrived, and there is not a single moment of introspection in the whole tale. I guess I would not have minded that too much if this was not a McMurtry book: I've loved so many of his works, that I probably expect far too much and this one was a disappointment.”
    • 2/5
      It started out ok but it got old towards the end.
    • 4/5
      Larry McMurtry's book - Telegraph Days - has a wide sweep of western history, from approximately 1876 until 1920. The narrator is a woman who became a small western town's telegrapher and went on to adventures with Buffalo Bill, Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickok. McMurtry's skill as a writer is tested by a name-dropping plot with limited action but the context of western history in the last quarter of the 19th century is faithfully reproduced.
    • 2/5
      Am I the only one that is becoming increasingly frustrated by successful authors who, in an apparent attempt to "cash in", begin pumping out numerous thin efforts that barely qualify as novels (Grisham and King are equally guilty in this regard, though King has certainly given good value over the years). Vonnegut is the king of this genre, but he doesn't try to disguise it. You know what you're getting. This "novel" is advertised as over 300 pages, but could easily have fit on 100 pages if standard type, margins, spacing and chapter length (is there a chapter longer than 1 1/2 pages?) were used. It can be read in a single sitting, yet retails for $25. Disgraceful. His recent Berrybender Narratives, released as three "novels" would have barely made a single good length book had they been packaged and sold as one. But then he'd have only gotten $25 instead of $75. This work would have been more fitting in a four novella collection similar to what King did with the Bachman collection. That having been said, McMurtry's writing style is as captivating as ever. This is the same guy that wrote Lonesome Dove and there is no mistaking it. If you can pick up this book used, for about $5, then you'll get what you're paying for. Me, I'll just continue to be a sucker and enjoy McMurtry's writing for as short a time as it takes me to finish his increasingly short pieces.
    • 5/5
      Larry McMurtry is one of the best character writers I've come across. He especially does the spunky females of the old west well, whereas a lot of western authors only even mention women as prostitutes. This was a quick, fun read and I enjoyed the honesty of Nellie and her life.
    • 4/5
      A slightly absurdist romp through the Old West. Nellie and Jackson Courtright are orphaned when their Virginia-gentry father "suicides himself" in Rita Blanca, No Man's Land. Jackson soon becomes accidentally famous when he guns down 6 desperadoes - "beginner's luck" - it later becomes clear he can't hit the broad side of a barn with his pistol. Deputy Jackson never moves much beyond that episode, but sister Nellie, the main narrator, "organizes" and "copulates" (her phrase) her way across the West. She goes to work for Buffalo Bill Cody and also meets the Earps, Clantons, Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday, William Tecumseh Sherman and Lillian Gish who all make at least cameo appearances. And mostly they all already know of Nellie before they meet her because of her work with Buffalo Bill and her own famous writing. A cross between Kurt Vonnegut and his own Lonesome Dove, in Telegraph Days McMurtry delivers a wild, sometimes ribald tale that witnesses the translation of the real life in the American West into the mythological Old West. Highly recommended because it's funny and still gives a good feel for the Old West.
    • 3/5
      Easy read, female protaganist in the Wild West, peters out at the end.
    • 3/5
      Fun. Light. A little celebrial in the end.
    • 1/5
      Just an okay read