The Rifle

Fiction by Garry Paulsen
Reviewed by Stephen G.
1 Available - Check it out of the NVHS Library


This is a great book about a very “sweet rifle”. Cornish McManus, a very artistic hard working man, made a flintlock muzzle-loader as a lifetime rifle, making it as precise and perfect as he could. This item meant the world to Cornish. He later ended up trading it to a man named John Byam, an unsettled man running from place to place into Western Pennsylvania and even beyond. Cornish made this trade because he ended up meeting a beautiful young lady named Clare that wanted to begin a family. With this dangerously accurate rifle in his hand, John Byam easily got caught in the Revolutionary war, later resulting in his death. After his death, a woman named Sarah, who had two sons, secretly took the rifle, having plans of giving it to one of her sons. Neither of her sons ended up getting it because of an unexpected exploding artillery shell. With this happening, she stored the rifle up in her attic and later forgot about it. The rifle was eventually found in 1993 by two children that moved into the house. The rifle ended up going into many other hands until a deathly accident that happened on Christmas Eve.

The Rifle is a pretty good book and I felt that Garry Paulsen did a great job of painting a picture in my mind. I rated it four out of five stars because the ending didn’t finish off the book the way I felt it should have.

The Rifle is an exciting, grabbing, and also knowledgeable book. I recommend this book to people who always like being on the edge of their seat. Once I began reading this book, I couldn’t put it down.