Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Will’s Race for Home: A Western. Illustrated by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov. Little, Brown and Company, 2025.

This middle grade novel is indeed a western, but a bit different from most books in the genre. Set in 1889 before and during the Oklahoma Land Rush, the story features twelve year old Will, and his family who are Black sharecroppers on a farm in Texas. Will’s father is a taciturn man, formerly enslaved, and tired of working on another man’s land. Will doesn’t understand his father, and doesn’t believe his father cares much for him. Then life changes when Father hears about free land available in Oklahoma for those who rush in to claim it. He is anxious to travel to the border to try to be one of the few who benefit from the opportunity.

Father needs someone to go with him, someone he can count on when the journey becomes difficult. So since Will can read and since there’s no one else, Will becomes his father’s trusted companion on the long way to Oklahoma and the land rush. The book also chronicles Will’s internal journey toward becoming what his father calls “tough”, becoming a man.

At first, I didn’t particularly like the prose style the book was written in: lots of short choppy sentences, with phrases interspersed between the sentences. “Sometimes Grandpa lets me try shooting a rabbit. Not often. I’m a bad shot.” “Father and Grandpa study the map. Marking, re-marking the trail. Praying for ten miles a day.” But as I read I began to appreciate the spare, straightforward prose as a reflection of the character of Will’s father in particular, and of the other western men they meet along the way. These are men who work hard and don’t always have much to say, but when they do speak, it’s important enough to require listening. The kind of man Will eventually will become, too.

So, it’s a coming of age story, a western, and a boy’s tale. In her afterword, Ms. Rhodes writes,

“Tales of African Americans on the western frontier are few. But having spent most of my life in the West and as a historical fiction writer, I felt compelled to explore the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. . . Will’s Race for Home is only one story, exploring a fictional African American family experiencing tragedy and triumph in their quest for freedom and a home in a ‘promised land.’ Will, the son of formerly enslaved people, is my hero. He has resilience, courage and loyalty.”

Many boys , and even some girls, would enjoy this story becoming a man at the turn of the century in the Wild West. There is some extended, and I think balanced, discussion, in short bursts, of guns and violence and when to use a gun and when to threaten violence in self-defense. And the ideas about the use of guns and violence are put to the test when Will must defend his family’s land claim from claim-jumping thieves.

I haven’t read too many middle grade fiction books from 2025 yet to compare, but this one is a favorite so far. Will is my hero, too. And with the tie-in to history and the Oklahoma Land Rush, I may very well put this novel on my wish list for Meriadoc Homeschool LIbrary’s collection.