Bud Smith works heavy construction and lives in Jersey City, NJ. He is the author of Teenager (2022), Double Bird (2018), Dust Bunny City (2017), among others. His fiction has been published in The Paris Review, The Believer, The Baffler, and The Nervous Breakdown, and many others (collected below). He is also a creative writing teacher and editor.
At Lit Hub he shared nine of his favorite road trip novels, including:
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome DoveRead about another entry on the list.
As realistic as any other fairytale, this fairytale is about a cattle drive from Texas to the snow peaked tip of NorthAmerica in the late 1870s. Two ex-Texas Rangers have heard a rumor that Montana is just about to open up for cattlemen, so they steal a bunch of Mexican livestock and head off on a drive. What follows is a list of every kind of natural disaster, Biblical in scope, a tale of friendship and denial, and a deep love story. Poignant. Sad as hell at the start of the page and then two paragraphs later the highest adventure you’ve ever seen. Despite its length, a breezy read.
Lonesome Dove may just be The Great Texas Novel. It is among Louis De Berniéres's six best books and Ann Brashares' six favorite books.
--Marshal Zeringue