After finishing a World War II book, I decided to pick up a book from another genre that I usually ignore—the Western.
I’ve never seen the John Wayne classic True Grit, but—as a fan of the Coen brothers—I’m interested in their version of the story. Before renting it, though, I thought that I would read the novel by Charles Portis (first published in 1968). And you know what? I can’t believe how much I enjoyed it!
When her father is shot by a drunken outlaw, 14-year-old Mattie Ross leaves her mother and younger siblings in their backwoods Arkansas home to track down his killer. With the aid of Rooster Cogburn—a Civil War veteran-turned-marshal with a murky past and a record of violence—and a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf, Mattie follows the murderer into the unsettled, lawless territory of Oklahoma.
Mattie is a character with spunk and spine. And—though she tells another character that she hired Cogburn because of his grit—it is clear that the novel’s title describes Mattie more aptly than any other character.
If other things hadn’t called me away from this book, I would have gladly read it all in one sitting. I’m not necessarily running out to find more Westerns, but True Grit was a pleasant surprise.
