This novel wasn't terrible or anything, just really mediocre. The premise is pretty tired: young, inexperienced boy gets taken under the wing of a rough, stoic, ruggedly individualistic vigilante type with questionable morals. Though they come from different worlds, they both learn a little bit from each other. The boy learns what it means to be a man, and the cold grizzled loner learns how to love again, in his own way. The novel has moments where it verges on doing some interesting things, philosophically, but it always falls flat. You can't have a chapter that laments man's inevitable self destruction at the hands of firearms, and end that same chapter with our main characters getting out of a sticky situation by using that same violence that you so detest . . . so the message becomes "VIOLENCE IS BAD . . . . EXCEPT WHEN GOOD GUYS USE IT," and "VIOLENT PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO USE GUNS . . . UNLESS THAT VIOLENT PERSON ALSO HAS A HIDDEN HEART OF GOLD AND LIKES TO DRAW PICTURES OF BIRDS IN SECRET." This book is a mess. On one hand, it's an entertaining Western (set in Eastern Pennsylvania, though), but on the other, Lautner tries way too hard to be profound, and his philosophical musings remind me way too much of all the young neo-con/libertarian pseudo-intellectuals I was surrounded by in college. For what it's worth, the book is a quick read and it is entertaining, but at the same time, it's way too heavy handed for its own good. In the end, meh.