"Shane" by Jack Schaefer (yet again)

Some fictional characters take up residence inside your heart in a quiet, calm, yet confident way, and you can't imagine life without them there anymore.  Shane is one of those, for me.  But not only Shane -- Joe and Marian and Bobby Starrett too.  The whole family of four are so, so dear to me.

This book never ceases to fascinate me.  How Shane rides onto the Starrett family farm one day, just asking for water for himself and his horse, ready to move on through again once he's refreshed.  Accepting a simple offer of hospitality, then another, then another, then taking on a job he never would have dreamed of doing before, and never would have done if it hadn't been Joe Starrett who offered it to him.  The sophisticated gunman becomes a farmer.  The aloof loner joins a family in the most integral way possible without actually becoming physically intimate with any of the family members.  He simply... becomes one of them.  Belongs to them, as the narrator remembers thinking at the time.  He adopts them, they adopt him, and he's theirs as much as they're his.

At the end, it's Shane who has to sever those ties, cut himself loose from his family so he can become the lone gunman again.  Not because he no longer loves his family, but because he loves them so much, he can't possibly do anything else.  Because greater love hath no man than this: that he would lay down his life for his friend.  And Shane loves the Starretts, as surely as they love him.  Just as surely as I love all four of them.

(From my Instagram)

On the surface, it's just another story of small farmers versus a big rancher.  The big ranges slowly gave way to small ranches and farms all across the West in real life, and that metamorphosis was often painful and brutal and violent.  Shane elevates this time-worn tale by giving us heroic men and women who are straight and true and upright and clean... but not perfect.  

Over the past seven years, this story has climbed higher and higher on my favorite books list -- going from somewhere down near fifty up to rest inside my top ten even as its characters nestle a little deeper into my heart with every reread.  It's a jewel-perfect book, pacing and characters and plot and description all polished and shining and brilliant.  The 1953 movie version starring Alan Ladd as Shane is equally wonderful, and it has climbed higher and higher on my favorite movies list over the years too.

I read the Critical Edition this time, but didn't read all the essays at the end.  Yet.  I read the introductory matter, and I'm saving the other material to enjoy now and again, adding one or two to each of my future rereads of the book so I can make them last a long time.

Particularly Good Bits:

Something in father, something not of words or of actions but of the essential substance of the human spirit, had reached out and spoken to him and he had replied to it and had unlocked a part of himself to us (p. 113-114).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some old-fashioned cussing and western violence.