Shane (novel)
First edition
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| Author | Jack Schaefer |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Western |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
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Publication date
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1949 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 214 p. (hardback first edition) & 119 p. (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | (paperback edition) |
| OCLC | 53183237 |
Shane is a western novel by Jack Schaefer published in 1949. It was initially published in 1946 in three parts in Argosy magazine, and originally titled Rider from Nowhere. The novel has been translated into over 30 languages, and was adapted into the famous 1953 film starring Alan Ladd.
The story is set in 1889 Wyoming, when the Wyoming Territory was still open to the Homestead Act of 1862. It is narrated by the homesteader's son Bob Starrett. The original unclaimed land surrounding the Starrett's homestead had been used by a cattle driver named Luke Fletcher before being claimed by Bob's father, Joe Starrett, along with many other homesteaders. Luke Fletcher settled there first, although only so much land could be claimed as a homestead (only 160 acres). Luke Fletcher's herd is at the verge of expanding to the point where the homesteads in the area are proving to be an interference.
The title-character Shane is a mysterious stranger who comes into the lives of the homesteaders, and who is tougher and wiser in the ways of the West than the farmers who homestead the land. He is thought to be Shannon, a gunslinger who went missing in Arkansas. Joe Starrett hires Shane as a hand on his farm, and Shane puts aside his handsome Western clothes and buys dungarees. He then helps the homesteaders to avoid intimidation by Fletcher and his men trying to get them to abandon their farms. With Shane's help, the farmers are able to resist Fletcher, but Shane is tested many times by the cowhands and gunslingers hired by Fletcher to intimidate him. Shane always comes through in the end, however, and eventually is forced to kill Fletcher and his men, which prompts him to leave the Wyoming Territory for fear of being labeled a killer.
Richard S. Wheeler has written of Shane and its author: "This was Jack Schaefer’s first novel. He preferred in later years to write stories less mythic and more attuned to the real West.... Although he is little known, and the volume of his work is small, he surely ranks as one of this nation’s greatest novelists."
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