True Grit

Charles Portis's True Grit is narrated by Mattie Ross, a churchgoing woman who recounts, fifty years after the fact, what happened to her in 1878 when she was fourteen. Her father is shot and killed by Tom Chaney, a drifter working on the family farm in West-Central Arkansas near the town of Dardanelle, who then rides off with his horse and his money. Mattie has no intention of leaving the matter to the courts, and she hires Rooster Cogburn, a one-eyed deputy marshal with a taste for drink and a reputation for shooting first. A Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf attaches himself to the pursuit as well.

The three of them follow Chaney into Indian Territory, and it is Mattie, stubborn and direct, who keeps the expedition pointed at what she came for. The novel is told entirely in her voice, looking back on the events from a distance of half a century and reporting them with her own judgements intact.

True Grit was first published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post in 1968 and then as a novel that year. It was adapted into the 1969 film starring John Wayne, Kim Darby and Glen Campbell, and in 1975 Wayne returned to the role in the sequel film Rooster Cogburn.