Like many kids who grow up in Texas, I had heard of Lonesome Dove long before I read the novel. The first time I saw my dad cry was when we watched Augustus “Gus” McCrae’s final moments on our well-worn VHS copy of the 1989 CBS miniseries adaptation. I saw the infamous snake scene sometime during my childhood and still hesitate to set foot in murky rivers. It wasn’t until the summer of 2021, a few months after Larry McMurtry died, that I finally read the book, which was first published in 1985. Since then, I’ve discovered that I share a common affliction with many other readers: I remember certain details from the story as if they belong to my own life. One of those…