Review: "Shane"

 

My father liked Westerns, but they never really appealed to me.  So, when the book club I am a part of said we were reading Shane by Jack Schaeffer, I thought “meh.”

Shane is one of the first Westerns written, and it is considered one of the best – if not the best.

Schaeffer portrays the struggle in the 1800’s between the cattle ranchers and the homesteaders over who will have the land.  These disputes led to much of the property laws we now have one the books.

Shane appears one day at a homesteader’s home.  The family consisted of Joe Starrett, his wife, Marion, and their son, Bob. Shane has a dark past which is never explained, but it comes forth as he defends the Starrett’s and as he encourages the best in them.  And that is the point of the story.

Schaeffer shows the family to be made up of three different people – not unequal, but different.  There is the father whose job is to earn a living and protect his family, there is the wife whose job is to care for the homestead, and there is the child who is to learn from and respect his parents and grown into the man he ought to be.

In a time of belief in gender fluidity, this is not a message that is well accepted, but this is how the country was made – how humans were made – and it was the accepted understanding until a short time ago.

[This review appears on my blog, Amazon.com, and Goodreads.com].