Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shane | 1949 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 2 | The Canyon | 1953 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 3 | The Pioneers | 1954 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 4 | First Blood | 1954 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 5 | Company of Cowards | 1957 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 6 | Out West | 1959 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 7 | Old Ramon | 1960 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 8 | Monte Walsh | 1963 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 9 | Adolphe Francis Alphonse Bandelier. | 1966 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
| 10 | Mavericks | 1974 | Jack Schaefer | Buy |
Jack Schaefer’s standalone novels cover nearly every corner of the Western experience. Shane (1949) remains the most famous, a tightly constructed story of a mysterious gunfighter who defends a homesteading family in 1880s Wyoming. The novel’s spare prose and moral clarity turned it into a classic, and the 1953 film cemented its place in American popular culture. But Schaefer’s other novels deserve attention on their own terms.
The Canyon (1953) follows a young man raised by an old Indian in an isolated canyon, while Company of Cowards (1957) examines a disgraced Civil War unit given one last chance to prove itself. Monte Walsh (1963) is the longest and most ambitious of the group, tracking a cowboy from his youth through old age as the cattle ranching way of life disappears around him. Old Ramon (1960), a children’s book about a boy and an old shepherd, won a Newbery Honor. Across all ten novels, Schaefer returned again and again to the question of how people survive, adapt, and hold onto their dignity in a harsh and changing land.