What I learned from… ‘The Road to Reckoning’ by Robert Lautner
About the book
About the bookTwelve-year-old Thomas Walker has never left New York City. His father, a traveling salesman hoping to earn money by selling Samuel Colt’s recent invention, the ‘Improved Revolving Gun,’ takes young Thomas with him on the road. But even the world’s first true revolver cannot save them from danger, and what starts as an adventure soon turns into a nightmare.
Thomas soon finds himself alone, and must rely on his own wits, courage, and determination, as well as a wooden replica of the Colt revolver, to protect himself. Luckily, an encounter with a surly ex-ranger, Henry Stands, leads to an improbable partnership, and the two set out in perilous pursuit of vengeance. That is, if they can escape the thieves who lurk around each trail, river, and road—and who have already stolen so much from Thomas.
What I learned
The Road to Reckoning employs a simple plot, but it’s the characterisation and non-stop action where the book really comes alive.
The story is narrated by Thomas as an older man recounting a journey he took at 12 years old with an ageing ranger. Once the action starts, it’s exhilarating.
The reader instantly identifies with the child Thomas, even though he comes across as stiff and formal at times. Is this the character of the child, or the older Thomas’s character coming through? Lautner uses the narrative device well, so we’re never sure where the two Thomases meet, and we’re left questioning what happened to Thomas in the intervening years. When the older Thomas expresses his regret at how he acted or responded to things as a child, we get a strong sense of a man who’s never been able to come to terms with his past.
Thomas is protected on his journey by Henry Stands, whose gruff exterior belies his true protective nature. Like Thomas, Stands is instantly likable, a classic Western hero, who is reluctant to reveal the harsh realities of life to the boy. The pair encounter seemingly endless danger on their journey, but it’s halfway through the book when Thomas is once again alone that the most shocking event occurs. We then get a true picture of the world Stands has been protecting Thomas from.
There is a malevolence that seeps towards me, figures cut out from the white lamp. I try to wish them gone and try to fight them gone but my hands are small and I cannot go against them or against the crowd that presses to drown me. There are men in black coats and high collars and I can smell iron and sulfur all around. But he appears then. Always. He is in a darker black than them, darker than them counterfeits could ever pretend to be. He has renounced age. The blade of his pistol’s sight has not dimmed in his eye. He is the dry lightning that stirred me to dreaming. And they retreat. They go back into the dark. Away from the actual. And I go back to sleep.
More about this book
First published in 2015 by The Borough Press
The Road to Reckoning at The Borough Press
The Road to Reckoning at Amazon.co.uk
About ‘What I learned…’
I read anything and everything and think there’s writing inspiration to take from from books of every genre.