While many modern books written for or about young people have characters who adopt a relatively nonjudgmental stance concerning human behavior, actions, and characters, Kelton presents a world in which sternly made and definitive judgments of people and life have a necessarily prominent place. Cloudy in the West realistically depicts the harsh, arduous, and even brutal conditions that held sway in the Texas of 1885. To exist in such a setting, unless one were protected by wealth or position of power, was to be forced to deal with the daily draining complications of drought, heat, cold, disease, pestilence, and brute beasts of both animal and human variety. Kelton presents the drama of a young boy trying to grow up faced with this Darwinian struggle for just the fundamentals of life, let alone any gracious niceties. In this setting and under these grueling conditions, some qualities of mind...