As Good As Gone, by Larry Watson

(my photo)

This is an Early Reviewers book, which I received from Algonquin Books, asking nothing but an honest review.

I enjoyed the storyline and the characters, got really involved in it, and kept reading to see what would happen. I did not much care for the strong language and sexuality, but the language was in keeping with the nature of the characters.

A tough, rangy old cowboy, now living almost as a hermit, is asked by his son to come stay with his grandchildren, who are strangers to him, for a few days while the son takes his wife to another city for surgery. The town, which as a former real estate agent, he helped build has also become strange to him, but the widow next door remembers him well.
His son and daughter-in-law have left some situations unresolved, and as attention is needed to sort them out, "Grandpa" delves in with knife and pistol and fists and tries to settle them the old-fashioned cowboy way.