Why Riley picked The Mountain Lion
In the mood for a non-traditional Western epic that was a deep-cut marvel but largely omitted from the Best Of lists for years? Looking for a coming-of-age saga set in backwoods Colorado in the '40's? Intrigued by this hook: "the novel ends with an act of bloodletting that will rattle even the most hardened reader"? Join up and read The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford - a "stone cold classic."
About The Mountain Lion
The Mountain Lion
by Jean Stafford
Coming of age in pre-World War II California and Colorado brings tragedy to Molly and Ralph Fawcett in Jean Stafford's classic semi-autobiographical novel, first published in 1947. Torn between their mother's world of genteel respectability and their grandfather's and uncle's world of cowboy masculinity, neither Molly nor Ralph can find an acceptable adult role to aspire to. As events move to their swift and inevitable conclusion, Stafford uncovers and indicts the social forces that require boys to sacrifice the feminine in order to become men and doom intelligent girls who aren't pretty. - Goodreads
About the reader
Riley Maddox, 9/10 Grade Level Dean, Math
Past picks by Riley:
- The Power Broker by Robert Caro
- The Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
- The Plague by Albert Camus
- In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
- Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
- Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes