Lynness: Lonesome Dove

I read Lonesome Dove for my Western on the strength of it being on most of the "Best Westerns" short lists and that my grandmother taped it from TV when it ran as a mini-series.  Other than that I knew nothing about it: I had thought the title probably referred to a Native American's name, not a town set in southern Texas.  The writing is well done, the characterizations are excellent, the various storylines progress and converge nicely, but at the end I felt I had misused my time.  There was a lot of drinking and prostitution, but it didn't feel gratuitous or even overdone- it felt very true to life as I imagine it would have been around the 1870's on the frontier.  That wasn't the biggest part of the problem.  *Spoiler warning*  The problem was that EVERYONE that was more than someone you met in passing was either dead or despondent at the end of the book.  Especially the ones you care about most.  Now, I'm not saying it should've ended like a Disney movie: that would've been unrealistic.  But I think it's unrealistic, too, to leave everybody hopeless.  So my basic objection is that there's enough in real life to get you down if you let it- I don't need to add to it.  It did make me think about what the pioneers went through, though.