True grit

a novel

Paperback, 224 pages

English language

Published Dec. 26, 2007 by Overlook Press.

ISBN:
978-1-58567-938-6
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
154686230

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5 stars (2 reviews)

U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn is hired by a 14-year-old girl to kill the man who murdered her father and stole the family nest egg. She accepts the help of the Texas Ranger, who is intent on the reward, and accompanies them on the quest.

20 editions

Great book: concise, funny, dark and dirty

5 stars

What a book, really. We get told the story of how a fourteen year old daughter sees the revenging dead of the killer of her father through, by contracting a US marshal and riding with him into Native territory. The story is told in her voice, with some southern dialect and some 19th century dialect, bringing her Old testament justice, her upraising, her intelligence and stuborness to funny, breathtaking life.

The marshal she obliges to catch or kill the killer is drunken Rooster Cogburn, a survivor of the Civil War who rode with a young Jesse James.

The plot mostly shows us Mattie Ross, Cogburn and the other marshal that rides with them, LaBoeuf. We only shortly meet Tom Chaney, the killer, or Lucky Ned the gang leader he rides with. It takes some wrangling for Mattie to get Cogburn to lift his arse, then to have Cogburn and LaBoeuf …

Subjects

  • Teenage girls -- Fiction
  • Fathers -- Death -- Fiction
  • United States marshals -- Fiction
  • Outlaws -- Fiction
  • Revenge -- Fiction