Shane

In this true Western classic, Jack Schaefer tells the story of a mysterious stranger who finds himself in the Wyoming Territory, joining local homesteaders in their fight to keep their land and avoid the intimidating tactics of cattle driver Luke Fletcher. While trying to leave his gunslinging days behind him, the mysterious stranger, Shane, is tested by Fletcher and his men. In Shane, Schaefer executes a perfect Western narrative while exploring the overarching themes of virtue, the human condition, and a man’s search for self. Shane was Schaefer's first novel, originally published in three installments in the pulp magazine Argosy as "The Rider from Nowhere," and remains a giant in the landscape of Western fiction. The now well-worn trope of the reluctant gunslinger saw its apotheosis in this narrative of a peace-seeking man pushed back into the fray, witnessed through the eyes of a young boy—the perfect narrator for a larger-than-life story of cowboys, land barons, ranch hands, and homesteaders that infleunced generations of filmmakers and novelists, and still rings true today.