Welcome to the dusty little Texas town of Thalia. At sixteen, Sonny Crawford is naive - until he meets a desperately lonely woman of forty. His best friend, Duane, is a bully but hopelessly in love with the prettiest, richest girl around. In the early 1950s, Sonny and Duane act out a poignant drama of adolescence- the restless boredom, the bouts of beer-drinking, the secret trips to Mexico in search of prostitutes, the erotic fantasies so powerful that, finally, they have to explode. "McMurtry is an alchemist who converts the basest materials to gold. The sexual encounters are sad, funny, touching, sometimes horrifying, but always honest, always human." - The New York Times Book Review