The Berrybender's party is moving forward across the Great Plains of the West towards Santa Fe. Tasmin's husband scouts ahead and falls in love with Pomp Charbonneau, who dies at the hand of the ruthless commander of the Spanish troops. A vast cast of characters meet up with the party as they travel, proving that the rolling grassy plains are not as empty as they look.

From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Larry McMurtry comes the first in a four-volume epic journey through the early American frontier, featuring the Berrybender family, English nobility adrift in the American West in the 1830s.
It is 1830, and the Berrybender family—rich, aristocratic, English, and hopelessly out of place—is on its way up the Missouri River to see the untamed West as it begins to open up. Lord and Lady Berrybender...

The youth of a small town in mid-twentieth-century Texas search for ways to escape boredom and experience life and love.