An American Icon: Mattie Ross

A spunky girl in the American West shows her ’true grit' as she chases down her father’s killer.
An American Icon: Mattie Ross
Cover design from the first-edition dust jacket of the 1968 novel "True Grit" by the American author Charles Portis. Published by Simon & Schuster. Public Domain
Jeff Minick
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No one trifles with 14-year-old Mattie Ross.

When hired hand Tom Chaney murders Mattie’s father in cold blood and steals his horse and hard-earned cash, it’s Mattie who sets out to retrieve her father’s body and to track Chaney to the ends of the earth, if need be, and either kill him or bring him to justice. She’s accompanied on the first stage of this journey by a neighbor, the kindhearted Yarnell.

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.