Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Modern Library (2004), Mass Market Paperback, 288 pages
Description
Set in 1885, The Ox-Bow Incident is a searing and realistic portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West. First published in 1940, it focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned. The result is an emotionally powerful, vivid, and unforgettable re-creation of the Western novel, which Clark transmuted into a universal story about good and evil, individual and community, justice and human nature. As Wallace Stegner writes, [Clark's] theme was civilization, and he recorded, indelibly, its first steps in a new country.
Media reviews
Since it first appeared in 1940, Clark’s psychological western has steadily gained admirers, both in its original form, and as a popular film. This new edition adds much supplementary material in its effort to confirm the novel’s status as a modern masterpiece.
User reviews
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
The Ox-bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark is a classic story that happens to be set in the American West. This is no “Cowboy” story with the good hero winning over the evil villain. This is much more of a study of mob mentality, the loss of individuality, and how a love of violence can
The story is simple and direct, two cowpokes come riding into town after a winter on the range. They are simply looking for a good time and a way to unwind after the long winter with just each other for company. Unfortunately the town of Bridger Wells, Nevada doesn’t have a lot to offer. Drinking, card playing and sleeping seem to be the main events. Even the companionship of a woman is denied as the last single woman was recently encouraged to leave by the good wives of the community. Local talk is of a rash of cattle rustling that has been going on over the winter months. Suddenly a rider comes galloping into town with the news that a local cowboy has been shot and killed.
As people gather, the mood changes to one of anger and bewilderment, and, eager for revenge they are easily whipped into a frenzy. The decision is made to strike out and deliver their version of justice to the killers. Our two cowboys, being new to the town felt they were getting more than their share of sideways glances when talk of cattle rustling came up so they decided it was in their best interest to join in with the mob.
Written in a tight, taunt fashion, the author delivers his story in a simple direct, somewhat allegorical manner. Each character represents a separate view of moral justice and how far they are willing to go, from sadistic eagerness to extreme reluctance. A simple story, but one that touches on many importance subjects including injustice and racism. The Ox-Bow Incident is a book will stay with me and certainly deserves it’s Classic label. Highly recommended.
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overcome one’s sense of judgement and morality.The story is simple and direct, two cowpokes come riding into town after a winter on the range. They are simply looking for a good time and a way to unwind after the long winter with just each other for company. Unfortunately the town of Bridger Wells, Nevada doesn’t have a lot to offer. Drinking, card playing and sleeping seem to be the main events. Even the companionship of a woman is denied as the last single woman was recently encouraged to leave by the good wives of the community. Local talk is of a rash of cattle rustling that has been going on over the winter months. Suddenly a rider comes galloping into town with the news that a local cowboy has been shot and killed.
As people gather, the mood changes to one of anger and bewilderment, and, eager for revenge they are easily whipped into a frenzy. The decision is made to strike out and deliver their version of justice to the killers. Our two cowboys, being new to the town felt they were getting more than their share of sideways glances when talk of cattle rustling came up so they decided it was in their best interest to join in with the mob.
Written in a tight, taunt fashion, the author delivers his story in a simple direct, somewhat allegorical manner. Each character represents a separate view of moral justice and how far they are willing to go, from sadistic eagerness to extreme reluctance. A simple story, but one that touches on many importance subjects including injustice and racism. The Ox-Bow Incident is a book will stay with me and certainly deserves it’s Classic label. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member phebj
I originally heard about this book in 2010 when I participated in my first group read on LT for Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, a book of essays about the West by Wallace Stegner. Stegner cited it as an example of a book about the real West as opposed to one about the mythical
The main storyline of The Ox-Bow Incident is about the hunting down and lynching of three men suspected of killing a well-liked ranch hand and stealing cattle from one of the big ranch owners in Bridger’s Wells, Nevada in 1885. But there also is an important secondary storyline about the lynch mob leader and his son. The father sees the son as weak and effeminate and uses the lynching to try and make a man out of him.
The story has been referred to as more of a psychological study than a Western and that’s the way I ended up thinking about it.
"Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones."
Of the 27 men and one woman who make up the “posse” only a few of them are brave enough to speak up and express their doubts about the lynching. The book was published in 1940 and I read somewhere that a lot of people saw parallels to what was happening in Germany at the time and I can definitely see that connection.
I probably would have given the book more than 4 stars if, despite being very well-written, it hadn’t been pretty much a slow read. It wasn’t until the last sixty pages that I got totally absorbed in it.
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West of the hero cowboy where good always triumphs over evil.The main storyline of The Ox-Bow Incident is about the hunting down and lynching of three men suspected of killing a well-liked ranch hand and stealing cattle from one of the big ranch owners in Bridger’s Wells, Nevada in 1885. But there also is an important secondary storyline about the lynch mob leader and his son. The father sees the son as weak and effeminate and uses the lynching to try and make a man out of him.
The story has been referred to as more of a psychological study than a Western and that’s the way I ended up thinking about it.
"Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones."
Of the 27 men and one woman who make up the “posse” only a few of them are brave enough to speak up and express their doubts about the lynching. The book was published in 1940 and I read somewhere that a lot of people saw parallels to what was happening in Germany at the time and I can definitely see that connection.
I probably would have given the book more than 4 stars if, despite being very well-written, it hadn’t been pretty much a slow read. It wasn’t until the last sixty pages that I got totally absorbed in it.
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LibraryThing member Schmerguls
A psychological western , concerning an attempt to prevent a lynching. Best book I read in 1953, although I only read eight books that year!
LibraryThing member jopearson56
This was really quite a great book. I remember reading it for American Literature in high school, and I don't think I much cared for it -- except that I have always remembered it for its very graphic description of a hanging. Which, as it turns out, isn't after all so very graphic. But the book
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overall is much better than I recall, well written analysis of justice in the old west, in a new nation still coming to terms with what the rule of law means and what happens when people are allowed to take the law into their own hands, when a group is operating with instinct rather than brains, and the folly of pride. Show Less
LibraryThing member bherner
A psychological western. Entertaining, enjoyable and thought-provoking.
LibraryThing member woodshopcowboy
Clark creates a plot as simple as hardtack bread. A good ol' boy from the valley runs into a bar and says that a popular cowhand's has been shot in the head and murdered. Two outsiders are drinking in this bar and for whatever reason, decide to join up the lynching mob. Racing out of the valley,
And then comes the twist.
This, I think, is the single best example of how good a pre-sixities western can be. After Ox-Bow came Berger's Little Big Man and Stegner's Angle of Repose and McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. Ox-Bow is dark, muddy and wicked, a place where men are men and act like it. A must for any western lover, and quite frankly, a must for any lover of thrillers, crime and mysteries.
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they find their way to the Ox-Bow and find three drifters with some head of cattle from the dead man's ranch. The three men are hung without a court; only the jury of dirty, drunk, angry and rawboned men. And then comes the twist.
This, I think, is the single best example of how good a pre-sixities western can be. After Ox-Bow came Berger's Little Big Man and Stegner's Angle of Repose and McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. Ox-Bow is dark, muddy and wicked, a place where men are men and act like it. A must for any western lover, and quite frankly, a must for any lover of thrillers, crime and mysteries.
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LibraryThing member momeara
A good read. Two cowboys walk into the bar and quickly become entangled in a posse who are heading out of town in search of men who are suspected of theiving local cattle and murder of a local cattlmen. Although there are mixed motives for joining the posse, because they are outsiders, they fear
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that if they do not join, they may become suspects themselves. It is largely a study in peer pressure and the mentality of the mob. Understated prose and an accurate picture of the idiom of the cowboy make this a pleasure to read. In the end they hang three men on scant evidence and subsequently find they were innocent. The ending of the book was an examination of effects of guilt on those involved. There is a adaption of the book for the movies staring Henry Fonda. It was a fairly pathetic attempt, featuring horses on sound stages, and stilted dialoge. It is also curious that they switched protaginists in the movie. I think the book deserves three stars and the movie deserves one. Show Less
LibraryThing member patience_crabstick
Boy is this book a downer. A well written downer, to be sure, but it's a book about a lynching, with uncomfortable observations on the weakness of man in the face of the pack.
LibraryThing member gefox
Cowboys in Nevada, 1885, are aroused by rumor of rustling & a murder, form vigilante group, find & finally hang 3 men that they find with supposedly stolen cattle. Almost immediately (that same morning) they discover that the cattle were not stolen & that the supposed murder victim, Kincaid, is
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alive. That's all to the story, but the book goes on to present an implausible debate between Davies (representing universal moral concerns) & the intelligent but naïve 1st person narrator. The most interesting character is "the Mex," one of the 3 hanged men, but he appears only briefly. The moral -- that justice is too subtle & complex to be left to democracy -- is politically ambiguous; it seems intended as a rejection of fascism from the right, i.e., on grounds of classically conservative respect for the old institutions. This book, published in 1940, was Clark's way of dealing with "Hitler and the Nazis." He explained that he was really talking about "a kind of American Nazism" in a letter to Walter Prescott Webb in the Signet edition. (adapted from ntbk 1982 May 2) Show Less
LibraryThing member gregory_gwen
for my book group I actually gave up on reading it in the moiddle but I don't see that as a choice here!
LibraryThing member LTFL_JMLS
for my book group I actually gave up on reading it in the moiddle but I don't see that as a choice here!
LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
This is a powerful book not only on the psychology of lynch mobs, but what is the quality that is most important in upholding civilization. Many might have seen the classic film, but I think the novel more than holds its own. Told as the first person account of a cowboy, Art Croft, at the periphery
Set in 1885 in the small town of Bridger's Wells in an unnamed United States Territory near the Sierra Mountains; a place still a raw frontier. Clark sketches dozens of characters. There are twenty-eight in the lynching party--two are there to try to stop it--or at least try to comfort the victims. Spark, a black handyman and preacher who witnessed his own brother's lynching as a child, and Davies, who owns a store in town. Sparks especially because of his race is basically powerless, but Davies does try to stop the tragedy in the making--and what events do to him is part of the most heartbreaking part of the book. He consciously tries to play the "light" to Major Willard Tetley's "dark." Of all the characters in the book, the two that seem the most despicable are two at the opposite ends of the social spectrum, Monty Smith, the town "bum" and the rich and powerful Tetley, the "biggest man in the valley" with maybe one exception.
But it's not so simple by the end, where we find reasons to condemn some of the "good" people and have sympathy for some of the "bad." Most of the people in that lynch mob are depicted as decent men. What rides them is various kinds of fear. Art and his friend Gil are partly drawn in because given the tensions in the town due to widespread cattle rustling, they fear being suspected. For most in that crowd, as Art puts it, "most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else." Others are "playing up to the audience." Gerald Tetley--the son of the Major--sees it as a pack mentality. "We're doing it because we're...afraid not to be in the pack."
So it's a thoughtful book, with beautiful lyrical writing, that feels cinematic on the page in terms of description and characterful dialogue, one that deals with complex strands of race, ethnicity, gender and class. And one with more than one twist in store. Top notch in plot, characters, style and themes.
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of events, first helping an attempt to stop the lynch mob from forming, than being swept up into it, he is thoughtful and does have a conscience. But what Clark tells us that's not enough without the "guts" to back it up.Set in 1885 in the small town of Bridger's Wells in an unnamed United States Territory near the Sierra Mountains; a place still a raw frontier. Clark sketches dozens of characters. There are twenty-eight in the lynching party--two are there to try to stop it--or at least try to comfort the victims. Spark, a black handyman and preacher who witnessed his own brother's lynching as a child, and Davies, who owns a store in town. Sparks especially because of his race is basically powerless, but Davies does try to stop the tragedy in the making--and what events do to him is part of the most heartbreaking part of the book. He consciously tries to play the "light" to Major Willard Tetley's "dark." Of all the characters in the book, the two that seem the most despicable are two at the opposite ends of the social spectrum, Monty Smith, the town "bum" and the rich and powerful Tetley, the "biggest man in the valley" with maybe one exception.
But it's not so simple by the end, where we find reasons to condemn some of the "good" people and have sympathy for some of the "bad." Most of the people in that lynch mob are depicted as decent men. What rides them is various kinds of fear. Art and his friend Gil are partly drawn in because given the tensions in the town due to widespread cattle rustling, they fear being suspected. For most in that crowd, as Art puts it, "most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else." Others are "playing up to the audience." Gerald Tetley--the son of the Major--sees it as a pack mentality. "We're doing it because we're...afraid not to be in the pack."
So it's a thoughtful book, with beautiful lyrical writing, that feels cinematic on the page in terms of description and characterful dialogue, one that deals with complex strands of race, ethnicity, gender and class. And one with more than one twist in store. Top notch in plot, characters, style and themes.
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LibraryThing member thornton37814
Art Croft and his sidekick Gil ride into a Nevada town, discovering that cattle rustlers have been at it. Art first attempts to help efforts to stop the formation of a lynch mob. Well, if you can't beat it, join it. He and Gil join the posse to pursue the rustlers, as much to prevent their becoming
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suspects as anything else. This western shows the forcefulness of mob psychology, particularly as some of the characters reflect in the closing chapter. Westerns are just not my thing. I do think this one is better written than most of this genre are. II have never seen the movie which was based upon the book, but I suspect that I would have enjoyed it more than the book itself, which is something I rarely say. The action just seems to lend itself to that format. Show Less
LibraryThing member cwflatt
A classic western, and tale of right and wrong, judgement and quick decisions gone wrong as most feel they are doing the right thing or afraid to go against the majority.
LibraryThing member kalafish
Considered a classic western, this book is about men and their thirst for justice at whatever cost. The book takes time to get going, but along the way you get to know a few of the characters and what makes them tick. Clark's attention to detail allows for a glimpse into the scenary, the weather
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and the men who set out to hang what they perceive as cattle rustlers and murderers. Show Less
LibraryThing member barringer
This is not the typical genre western full of myth and fantasy. There are no gunfights, no good guys, no roundups, no whore with a heart of gold. This is a tragedy without a hero moving slowly and inevitably toward its climax and never quite reaching a resolution. It moves like a Shakespearean play
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through its five acts and like Shakespeare spends more time on character than on plot and action. Along the way, it asks about justice, civilization, and violence; about why people act the way they do in groups; about who feels guilt and who feels failure; about how easily some grant themselves forgiveness. And while some tragedies move from climax to catharsis, this one just moves on. Show Less
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
The Ox-Bow Incident was first published in 1940 but its premise could have been about modern mob mentality. It is the story of a rumor and what happens when a community is whipped into a frenzied need for self-righteous justice. In Nevada someone has been rustling cattle. When two men are pinned
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for the crime the mob cries for retaliation. Then they find out one of their own has been murdered. Now, they want the men lynched. While this is a western it could take place anywhere a collective group of angry people let their emotions get the better of them. It's the story of what happens when this group takes the law into their own hands. Clark's character development is brilliant. Each man in the story is a study in emotion. The tension that builds due to violence and bred by hate and suspicion rings true. Show Less
LibraryThing member locriian
UGH this book was painful to read. Terrible writing style, terribly boring story, characters that you just want to scream at for being irritating, blatantly obvious message, therefore unlikely to catch on in readers' minds because they will all be alert to the fact you're trying to send them a
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message. Well maybe not, most people in my English class where I had to read this were quite unintelligent and may not have picked up on that. Show Less
LibraryThing member CarmenMilligan
I know this is a classic, and I am guessing it's because it's among the first books written about what happens with vigilante justice. But for me, it has been an excruciating 100 pages. It is not a difficult read, but it is so incredibly boring that I dread picking it up. I am invoking the
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"100-page rule" and putting this book down. There are too many great books out there without me having to make myself read them. I am hereby moving on to one of them. Show Less
LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
I've never seen the movie, nor did I really know what this was about going in - only that it's short, and that it's read both for pleasure and studied as Literature. Well, I was duly impressed. I did enjoy it, and I did find it provocative and intense, also.
I'd like to quote about 1/2 of page 50
I'm off to read the other reviews. You can be, too, but the thing is, you'd probably be better off just reading the book."
I'd like to quote about 1/2 of page 50
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(my edition) but I think it would be beyond fair use. See if you can appreciate this snippet: ...arguments sound a lot different indoors.... [you] don't get a chance to test ideas against the real size of things..." The author uses first-person so we can watch the narrator sharing these kinds of thoughts throughout the book, without feeling like we're being preached or teached at.I'm off to read the other reviews. You can be, too, but the thing is, you'd probably be better off just reading the book."
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LibraryThing member SamSattler
As it turns out, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, who was a thirty-one-year-old English teacher at the time, struck literary gold in 1940 with the publication of his debut novel The Ox-Boy Incident. The novel was made into a major motion picture starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, and Harry Morgan in
Most readers will be familiar with plots similar to the story Clark tells in The Ox-Bow Incident even before they pick up the book for the first time. Tales about a group of cattle rustlers being chased down and lynched by a posse of local vigilantes have been played out in countless novels, movies, and television shows for near one hundred years now. The stories are usually rather gut-wrenching ones even when those being hanged from the nearest big tree really are the bad guys. But when mistakes are made, and innocent men are rashly killed by a mob of executioners, the stories truly are heartbreaking.
What makes The Ox-Bow Incident so different from most of the others is the emphasis Clark places on the motivations of the twenty-eight men who band together to chase down the men they believe have killed a local ranch hand while in the process of running off with forty head of cattle. The novel is both a character study and a hard look into the power of a mob to carry men to places they would never otherwise be willing to go. Even as the posse is being pulled together, the novel’s narrator makes this observation:
“Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones. There are a lot of loud arguments to cover moral cowardice, but even an animal will know if you’re scared.”
Then, a few pages later, the narrator points out how the local men are being pushed into riding with the posse by having it pulled together out in front of the local saloon rather than inside it:
“…a lot of these men must be fixed so that nothing could turn them off unless it could save their faces. The women were as stirred up as the men, and though a lot of them would have been glad if they could keep their own men out of it, that didn’t make any difference. When a man’s put on his grim business face, and hauled out a gun he maybe hasn’t used for years, except for jack rabbits, he doesn’t want to go back without a good excuse.”
It is inevitable. Twenty-eight men, led by two or three bloodthirsty types who always enjoy bullying and fighting anyway, are going to risk their own lives to chase three or four unidentified men into the blizzard that is fast descending upon them all. Most of them don’t really want to be part of a lynching, but only the town’s two preachers (one of them white, the other black) have the courage to speak up about what they are doing. The riders already assume the guilt of those they are chasing, and they do not intend to bring them back to town for a jury trial. The posse will be judge, jury, and executioner — and no one is going to stop them. Guilty or not, someone has to die tonight.
Bottom Line: While Clark’s moral arguments can get a little longwinded and a little repetitive as several of his characters attempt to find the moral courage to refuse to join the posse and to persuade others to do the same, but the pace with which the posse finally forms helps build the tremendous tension readers feel as the book reaches its climax. What happens at that point, and what happens in its immediate aftermath, is heartbreaking for all concerned. Walter Van Tilburg Clark hit a home run his first time at bat.
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1943, and today Tilburg’s novel is considered a classic of its type. Most readers will be familiar with plots similar to the story Clark tells in The Ox-Bow Incident even before they pick up the book for the first time. Tales about a group of cattle rustlers being chased down and lynched by a posse of local vigilantes have been played out in countless novels, movies, and television shows for near one hundred years now. The stories are usually rather gut-wrenching ones even when those being hanged from the nearest big tree really are the bad guys. But when mistakes are made, and innocent men are rashly killed by a mob of executioners, the stories truly are heartbreaking.
What makes The Ox-Bow Incident so different from most of the others is the emphasis Clark places on the motivations of the twenty-eight men who band together to chase down the men they believe have killed a local ranch hand while in the process of running off with forty head of cattle. The novel is both a character study and a hard look into the power of a mob to carry men to places they would never otherwise be willing to go. Even as the posse is being pulled together, the novel’s narrator makes this observation:
“Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones. There are a lot of loud arguments to cover moral cowardice, but even an animal will know if you’re scared.”
Then, a few pages later, the narrator points out how the local men are being pushed into riding with the posse by having it pulled together out in front of the local saloon rather than inside it:
“…a lot of these men must be fixed so that nothing could turn them off unless it could save their faces. The women were as stirred up as the men, and though a lot of them would have been glad if they could keep their own men out of it, that didn’t make any difference. When a man’s put on his grim business face, and hauled out a gun he maybe hasn’t used for years, except for jack rabbits, he doesn’t want to go back without a good excuse.”
It is inevitable. Twenty-eight men, led by two or three bloodthirsty types who always enjoy bullying and fighting anyway, are going to risk their own lives to chase three or four unidentified men into the blizzard that is fast descending upon them all. Most of them don’t really want to be part of a lynching, but only the town’s two preachers (one of them white, the other black) have the courage to speak up about what they are doing. The riders already assume the guilt of those they are chasing, and they do not intend to bring them back to town for a jury trial. The posse will be judge, jury, and executioner — and no one is going to stop them. Guilty or not, someone has to die tonight.
Bottom Line: While Clark’s moral arguments can get a little longwinded and a little repetitive as several of his characters attempt to find the moral courage to refuse to join the posse and to persuade others to do the same, but the pace with which the posse finally forms helps build the tremendous tension readers feel as the book reaches its climax. What happens at that point, and what happens in its immediate aftermath, is heartbreaking for all concerned. Walter Van Tilburg Clark hit a home run his first time at bat.
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LibraryThing member dandelionroots
Clark's words about his tale --
The book was written in 1937 and '38, when the whole world was getting increasingly worried about Hitler and the Nazis, and emotionally it stemmed from my part of this worrying. A number of the reviewers commented on the parallel when the book came out in 1940, saw it
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A peeling back of the baseness, absurdity, and horror of mob justice framed in the comforting setting of the Wild West. The slow build with abundant chances for a changed course - even though we can see the inevitable murders ahead. Those who speak against are considered crazy or worse, weak. As if fear wasn't a prerequisite of bravery. While those who are complicit via their conflicted silence are the significant majority, who if forced to act alone or lead would not find the drive or justification. Peer pressure in its ugliest, most terrifying form.
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Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones. There are a lot of loud arguments to cover moral cowardice, but even an animal will know if you're scared. [...] he was going to find that it was the small but present "we," not the big, misty "we," that shaped men's deeds, no matter what shaped their explanations.
The book was written in 1937 and '38, when the whole world was getting increasingly worried about Hitler and the Nazis, and emotionally it stemmed from my part of this worrying. A number of the reviewers commented on the parallel when the book came out in 1940, saw it
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as something approaching an allegory of the unscrupulous and brutal Nazi methods, and as a warning against the dangers of temporizing and of hoping to oppose such a force with reason, argument, and the democratic approach. They did not see, however, or at least I don't remember that any of them mentioned it (and that did scare me), although it was certainly obvious, the whole substance and surface of the story, that it was a kind of American Naziism that I was talking about. I had the parallel in mind, all right, but what I was most afraid of was not the German Nazis, or even the Bund, but that ever-present element in any society which can always be led to act the same way, to use authoritarian methods to oppose authoritarian methods.---
A peeling back of the baseness, absurdity, and horror of mob justice framed in the comforting setting of the Wild West. The slow build with abundant chances for a changed course - even though we can see the inevitable murders ahead. Those who speak against are considered crazy or worse, weak. As if fear wasn't a prerequisite of bravery. While those who are complicit via their conflicted silence are the significant majority, who if forced to act alone or lead would not find the drive or justification. Peer pressure in its ugliest, most terrifying form.
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Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones. There are a lot of loud arguments to cover moral cowardice, but even an animal will know if you're scared. [...] he was going to find that it was the small but present "we," not the big, misty "we," that shaped men's deeds, no matter what shaped their explanations.
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LibraryThing member Castlelass
This book is a powerful, thought-provoking indictment of the mob mentality. At times, it is difficult to read, as you know what is coming and want to convince the characters to choose a different course of action. It is well-written, and the characters are well-developed. Recommended to readers who
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enjoy books about psychology, philosophy, history, law or human failings. Show Less
LibraryThing member kslade
Good novel about a lynching and guilt, etc. in the West.
LibraryThing member akmargie
A friend added this to her list and reminded me that I had read it when it was One Book, One Chicago selection. Incredible. Dense and hard to get through, but so engrossing. This is good literary fiction. There's more at stake here then some wimpy protagonist's feelings. These are real and
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sympathetic characters that make an impact when you read their story. A powerful book with a powerful story and powerful characters. I would reread it if I didn't think it would destroy me all over again. Show Less
Awards
Original publication date
1940
Physical description
288 p.; 4.15 inches
ISBN
0812972589 / 9780812972580