In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

The stories in this book were written a half-century ago, and in a preface he wrote for them halfway between then and now their author was surprised even then that they were still being read, surviving like a "landed fish who startles us with a late flop." If you read them, though, you won't be surprised they've lasted, especially "The Pedersen Kid," which is nearly half the length of the book and which I still vividly remember a quarter-century after I first read it. All of the stories are experiments of some kind, and the experiment in "The Pedersen Kid" seems to be this: how much breathtaking suspense and action can he pack into one story, using the simplest of words? It's still breathtaking.