The Last Ride

June 1, 2014
Just before the Civil War, impoverished Walter Burke fulfills a deathbed promise and sends his little sister east to New York. He joins the Pony Express in order to fund her education and continues sending money from his earnings as a bounty hunter. Then, in 1885, he's summoned to New York for the reading of his sister's will. Walter is entrusted with accompanying his sickly, though very rich, nephew to San Francisco, delaying his own plans, with two buddies from the Pony Express, to set up his Wyoming ranch. More delays come when Walter decides to take the boy into the wilderness and make a man of him, though these are by far the novel's most winning scenes, as Walter's rough ways are leavened with patience and tenderness. When the boy is kidnapped by his sleazy stepfather, Walter and his pals undertake a last Pony Express ride to rescue him, as unlikely a set of events as anything in a Max Brand novel, but good-hearted and entertaining.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)