[a:Leif Enger|13591|Leif Enger|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1534287991p2/13591.jpg] stole my heart with [b:Peace Like a River|227571|Peace Like a River|Leif Enger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436139976l/227571._SY75_.jpg|3332231], holding me captive from the first page to the last. I was afraid he could not pull off that trick again, but he did. After the first few chapters, in which I was beginning to doubt, this book took off and sailed, dragging me along in its wake. It is not serious or wrenching like [b:Peace Like a River|227571|Peace Like a River|Leif Enger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1436139976l/227571._SY75_.jpg|3332231], but it is endlessly entertaining, and who wants an author to write the same book twice?

There are three superb characters, offered up for our enjoyment. They populate the dying West, where the desperados are old, as are the lawmen chasing them. Monte Becket, a man who knows nothing of the West except the imaginings he has put into his surprisingly successful novel; Glendon Hale, a man with a past that he wants to atone for; and Charlie Siringo, a less than scrupulous Pinkerton man, find themselves locked into each other's lives and swept across the rapidly changing 1915 landscape from Minnesota to California . The book is a wild ride, with these three reminding me of the lost art of bronco busting, where winning or losing is always determined by who hangs on the longest.

The West here is a dying culture, where the only cowboys are in wild west shows, and names like Butch Cassidy are beginning to fade with the memories of the men who knew him. It is, also, a tale about redemption; a tale about finding out who you are, or who you can be, before it is too late.

You can’t explain grace, anyway, especially when it arrives almost despite yourself. I didn’t even ask for it, yet somehow it breached and began to work. I suppose grace was pouring over Glendon, who had sought it so hard, and some spilled down on me.

Many of the events of the book would seem ludicrous in isolation and perhaps even in afterthought, but I believed this story and every event in the reading. I was there. I saw it, vividly. I pictured Hale and Siringo with weathered faces and western drawls that identified them as different, as relics, but with a kind of magical character that would be missed in the future from which they would shortly be missing.

I am so glad I took the time out of my planned reading to work in this delightful book. I was sad to relinquish these characters in the end, but I have no problem imagining where they are now, beyond the confines of the book, because the end is never truly the end in this one.
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book club book, Lynda soder ( )

If a book doesn’t grab you by page 50, you shouldn’t feel bad for abandoning it. But SO BRAVE, YOUNG, AND HANDSOME should grab you right away with Leif Enger's typical writing style. However, I found that this book doesn’t live up to its promise.

Monte Becket is an author. He has written a bestseller, and everyone is anticipating what comes next. But he doesn’t have it in him, whatever “it” is. So he leaves his ever loving wife and child to join his neighbor, Glendon Hale, who is headed for Mexico. Glendon wants to apologize to the wife he left there many years before, and Monte wants to find "it."

What follows are chapter upon chapter upon chapter of unlikely events. This is how Monte gets from here to there, and the heck with his wife and child, who want him home. He ends up in California, where Glendon‘s wife has remarried and settled with her new husband. (It doesn’t spoil the story to tell you that.)

The book bored me to tears. I did not care about any one character. The whole thing is just plain silly. It felt like reading a comic book. ( )

In 1915 former train robber Glendon Hale undertakes a journey to escape his guilt and redeem himself. For his companion, he has convinced Monty, the story's witness and narrator, to accompany him, and he has a Pinkerton detective fast on his heels who is obsessed with capturing him. Throughout their encounters, along with Monty we are reminded of the complexities of a person's character. traits of good and evil. ( )

This novel combines a big Western story with characters and themes that you'll want to spend time mulling over. I really liked it, better than Peace Like a River which is an excellent book but I thought it was a little too sad much of the time. ( )