Chaney kills him, robs the body of the remaining $150 and two gold pieces, and flees into Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) on his horse. Later, Ross tries to intervene in a barroom confrontation involving Chaney.

Ross takes $250 with him to pay for the horses, along with two gold pieces that he has always carried, but he ends up spending only $100 on the horses. One day, Frank Ross and Chaney go to Fort Smith to buy some horses. Chaney is not adept as a farmhand, and Mattie has only scorn for him, referring to him as 'trash' and noting that her kind-hearted father, Frank, hired him only out of pity. 'Rooster' Cogburn and a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (pronounced 'La-beef').Īs Mattie's tale begins, Chaney is employed on the Ross's family farm in West-Central Arkansas, near the town of Dardanelle in Yell County. She is joined on her quest by Marshal Reuben J. She recounts the story of her adventures fifty years earlier, in 1878, when she undertook a quest to avenge her father's murder by a drifter named Tom Chaney. The novel is narrated by Mattie Ross, churchgoing elderly spinster distinguished by intelligence, independence, and strength of mind. In November 2010, The Overlook Press published a movie tie-in edition of the second film version of True Grit. In 2010, Joel and Ethan Coen wrote and directed another film adaptation of True Grit.

Six years later, in 1975, Wayne reprised his Academy Award-winning role as the tough hard drinking one-eyed lawman in the sequel film Rooster Cogburn. The novel was adapted for the screenplay of the 1969 film True Grit starring John Wayne, Kim Darby and Glen Campbell. True Grit is included in the Library of America of Portis' Collected Works. It is considered by some critics to be 'one of the great American novels.' The novel is told from the perspective of a woman named Mattie Ross, who recounts the time when she was 14 and sought retribution for the murder of her father by a scoundrel, Tom Chaney. True Grit is a 1968 novel by Charles Portis that was first published as a 1968 serial in The Saturday Evening Post.

True grit by charles portis