Silver Grass
John D. Nesbitt’s newest Western offers the classic entry into an adventure: “A stranger comes to town.” Young Wilsey Grant, 17, wandering toward the frontier settlement of Silver Grass in search of work, befriends someone in tougher straits than his own—a tramp who’s been beaten and robbed and is trudging, hungry, through the dry land. Because Wilsey opts to give the man a hand reaching the town, he’s stunned to find Walter Finn murdered soon after.
Wilsey’s an orphan and pretty naive, so the factions in Silver Grass baffle him: The business owners scraping by, a cluster of would-be homesteaders waiting for land to open up, and a truly nasty range-hogging entrepreneur making big bucks off wealthy guests buying his upscale “camping” experience. At the same time, this brute is fencing off public land for his own use, and murdering anyone getting in his way.
When Deputy Calvin Yenser rides into town to investigate the tramp’s death and seek justice, Wilsey already has another death to report—the brother of a young settler named Alice. Meanwhile, determined to figure out what’s really going on around Silver Grass, the young man already has evidence to report to the deputy sheriff, and a willingness to put more than just his testimony on the line.
The range war erupting in Silver Grass is small, but its impacts on Wilsey and the people he begins to care about—men who’ll offer kindness and justice, and young women who size up the situation and appreciate it—are huge. Help a young-adult reader to persist through the first couple of awkward chapters, and let the well-balanced story set a spark to an ongoing interest in the Western frontier and its people.
