Yester's Ride

February 15, 2019
Crigger (The Woman Who Built a Bridge, 2018) clearly enjoys turning the western genre on its head, and she does it without losing attention to historical detail. Yester's Ride is set in and around the Lewiston region straddling the Idaho-Washington border, as much a rural, agricultural region today as it was in the years following the Civil War. The central protagonists are three strong, intelligent young adults: a twelve-year-old, half Chinese girl, Ketta, born of sexual assault; her half-brother, Yester, taller, stronger, and more thoughtful than most grown men; and Yester's best friend, Nat, a M�tis young man with a quick sense of humor and impressive tracking abilities. Using terminology appropriate to the era, Crigger also illustrates how racial animosity?commonplace at the end of the nineteenth century, so discordant today?feels. As innovative as the novel is, Crigger doesn't forget to include the big, gutsy scenes typical of a western novel. There are sweeping vistas, precisely described horseback rides, and a heart-pounding, heroic final shootout.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)