Shane (1920)
Shane is a 1920 conduct of life book written by Jack Schaefer.
A weathered stranger rides into a Wyoming valley in the 1880s and hires on with the Starrett homestead, saying little about the life behind him. Young Bob Starrett watches Shane with a boy's hunger for a hero, noting the care he takes with a gun he claims to have set aside. A cattle baron leans on the valley's farmers and imports a hired killer to break them, and Shane's buried past starts to pull against his loyalty to the family that took him in. Jack Schaefer tells it lean and plain, a foundational American western about violence and the men who carry it.
Quick answers
What is Shane about?
A weathered stranger rides into a Wyoming valley in the 1880s and hires on with the Starrett homestead, saying little about the life behind him. Young Bob Starrett watches Shane with a boy's hunger for a hero, noting the care he takes with a gun he claims to have set aside. A cattle baron leans on the valley's farmers and imports a hired killer to break them, and Shane's buried past starts to pull against his loyalty to the family that took him in. Jack Schaefer tells it lean and plain, a foundational American western about violence and the men who carry it.
When was Shane published?
Shane was published in 1920.
Who made Shane?
Shane was written by Jack Schaefer.
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Explore Shane guides
Shane in our writing
- Companion guide: Westerns
A few thoughts on Shane
The 1953 film with Alan Ladd remains the definitive screen version, hushed and elegiac in the same key. For that reluctant-gunman weight inside a game, Red Dead Redemption 2 lets you feel an old way of life closing in, while Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven revisits the very myth Shane both honors and questions.
Gunfighters who can't leave the violence behind them
Shane's drifter buries his gun and his past until the valley needs both again, and these follow men in that same bind. Unforgiven's retired killer takes one more job to survive. Last Stand at Saber River sends a Confederate veteran home to defend land people want taken from him. Red Dead Redemption 2 and Jack London's Lost Face carry the same reckoning, men measuring what the wild still owes them.