In general, I've never felt a fascination for westerns. We kids did used to watch The Lone Ranger and undoubtedly went around whooping and hollering on horses, sixguns popping caps and leaving a trail of outlaw' corpses behind. We didn't have to tie the bodies onto a horse and haul it into town to collect the bounty, because our corpses always stood back up and rejoined the game.
Those were the days, for sure, and this is the perfect book for those days. Innocent and pure-hearted as they come. I didn't once feel a pang of modern conscience sting me as I embraced Mattie Ross and went willingly along on her quest to see her father's murderer hanged or she'd kill him herself.
And that, I believe, is the whole point of literature--living a point of view that would never in a thousand years be yours--and getting it.
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