The way McMurtry articulates this "turnabout" is great (you can find it on his wikipedia page). I get his point—the characters suffer immensely, and you would h

The way McMurtry articulates this "turnabout" is great (you can find it on his wikipedia page). I get his point—the characters suffer immensely, and you would hope the reader could recognize that it wouldn't be the best world to live in—and yet he portrays the characters with such heart that I don't know why it would be surprising that people fall in love with them. I won't post any spoilers, but there's a moment where one of the characters is leaving the group, and he says something to the effect of, "Most of the cowboys were rude and incompetent, but they were still his compañeros." Those family dynamics, the mixture of love and annoyance we feel with the people around us when we're part of a tribe, is such a hard thing to portray, and McMurtry does it beautifully. So not only do you have these incredibly complex characters, but circumstances bring them together as a family (something I think is often deeply missing in the modern world, and people pine for).