True Grit

First published in 1968, this novel is narrated by the elderly Mattie Ross, who as a fourteen-year-old in the 1870s leaves home in Arkansas to avenge her father's murder. She hires the federal marshal Rooster Cogburn, a fat, hard-drinking fighter, and is joined by the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf; together they ride into the Indian Territory after the killer Tom Chaney and the outlaw Ned Pepper's gang. Winter, rivers, and a dugout hold the chase. The voice is legal, stubborn, and comic. The book is a Western of a child's contract with violent men, not a biography of a historical marshal.

Bound in multicolour picture printed and blocked cloth. Gilt tile blocked black slipcase.