The Old West is filled with dangers, some environmental, some from wild animals, and some from the human sort of predator. It’s already a compelling cocktail of threats, but I love that the Weird Western genre is extra enough to add another, supernatural element to the mix. Lish McBride’s Red in Tooth and Claw combines all elements marvelously in a compelling YA package.
Things are bad enough when Faolan Kelly’s granddad dies, leaving Faolan alone in the dusty world. The farm and everything else is now Faolan’s, of course—that is, as long as the unscrupulous mayor and his goons don’t weasel it away from Faolan before Faolan’s eighteenth birthday arrives. And that’s the best-case scenario; things will be even worse if he, or anyone else, learns that Faolan is a girl, not a boy. With wicked smiles, they send Faolan to the Settlement, an oasis of plenty amid the wilderness. But while there’s plenty of food to go around, there are also plenty of rules, and secrets. Faolan knows to buckle down and do whatever it takes to wait out the months to that magical birthday. That means perfect manners and observing each and every rule that His Benevolence—HisBen—has set forth for the Settlement, no matter how inane or hard to swallow those rules are.
But circumstances make it hard for her to keep her head down. While venturing outside the Settlement’s walls with a bunkmate and burgeoning friend, Faolan and Jesse happen upon the cold corpse of the wagon driver who delivered Faolan to the Settlement, and the brutality of the driver’s injuries suggest an attack of an animal far larger than any Faolan knows about in their neck of the woods. The nomadic Rangers camping nearby have seen and heard strange things, too. When Faolan is thrown into a small shed for punishment, it’s only song and prayer that keep some huge beast howling and scratching at the shed from bursting through and having a Faolan-sized snack. It seems like everyone knows someone who’s disappeared from Settlement, but HisBen’s rules mean those stories are only traded in whispers. Still, no one’s ever accused Faolan of knowing when to stop asking questions, but that’s a quality that might just get Faolan killed.
Faolan is an easy character to get behind, with a clear voice that makes you want to sit down and listen up. She’s practical and stubborn, though not to a fault, and, despite having an uncommonly long streak of luck, refreshingly avoids the kind of main-character heroics that are (understandably) common in literature. Most importantly, she sounds like a person well acquainted with their own needs and wants, and that helped to make the gentle reveal of her inward gender vs her outward presentation continue feeling authentic.
But a main character is only as strong as the characters around her, and McBride has artfully drawn up a solid and distinct cast of supporting characters that do feel like people someone would want to be around and could count on. At times, the dichotomy between the good guys and the bad is a little stark. Early on, the near-mustache-twirling evil of the mayor had me wary about how many times and how hard Faolan was going to be kicked down before allowed to rise up again. Fortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that those lines of morality are drawn around the dangers of the natural world. The wilderness, after all, is made up of predators and prey, and no one asks the prey if they’re comfortable in that role.
McBride also succeeds at building tension and stretching the shadows long before showing the reader what’s casting them. Several times, the story made me look up and shiver. It’s here where the utilization of all the elements of Weird Western really shines. From supernatural creatures to sinister humans to wild animals to the unfeeling wilds of nature, the threats are everywhere, and each is given due attention, all woven together to keep any single element from having all the fun—or bearing too much weight to make a satisfying story. And because there are so many types of dangers, even the happiest ending can’t free Faolan and her friends from all of them. It’s that kind of grounding that can give a story a satisfying ending without becoming cloyingly sweet. And because McBride doesn’t rely on massive twists or reveals to deliver chills, I expect Red will hold up on the re-read, too.
Ring Reads 