This little book was brief and told by a boy who might have been me, and was just the place to make the long leap from western movies to literature. All the better because almost as soon as the reading was completed, the movie was released. Shane by Jack Schaefer is every bit as beautiful as the gorgeous film by George Stevens—one of the true classics in both mediums. The magnificent Rocky Mountains scenery, (Walter)Jack Palance’s sneering bad guy, Alan Ladd almost as short as the small boy through whose eyes it is all seen, but mostly it is the power the film exhibits. The fist-fight scene, in which Ladd and Van Heflin slug it out, apparently causing the sky to erupt, the wind to rise violently and all the farm animals to go berserk, is remarkable. Shane, and High Noon, stand alone as the best westerns.