A Quintessential Western

This is a case where one wants to put aside the potentially dismissive genre label, so that a truly fine book can be properly embraced as "literature" - and yet, despite the depth and scope which enable it to break out of its categorical box, all the iconic elements of the Western story - its images, themes, landscapes and legends - suffuse this book, and draw the reader into the never-ending, constantly shifting battles that wage from the rough streets and fragile structures of the eponymous town, to the surrounding sun-scorched terrain that supplies the fledgling community with its reason for being, and for its potential extinction.