cover image Sunshine Rider

Sunshine Rider

Rick Lynden Hardman, Ric Lynden Hardman. Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, $15.95 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-385-32543-1

Despite a meandering plot and several inexplicable choices on the part of the hero, it is hard not to like this goofy, amiable food-loving western, complete with recipes for curried horse and scrambled brains. In 1881, teenager Wylie Jackson is thrilled to take work as an apprentice cook on a cattle drive. His special charge is Roselle, a loving ""cattalo"" (half longhorn cow, half buffalo) who rolls over and sits on command. But when Wylie is forced to shoot a newborn calf and eat its brains, he turns vegetarian, steals a horse and goes on the lam. With Roselle trotting behind, he decides to pose as a physician, and in doing so finds he really does want to be a doctor: ""I reasoned it was easier to take money from sick folk than to rob trains or banks, and they thank you besides."" Even as a healer, Wylie lies, steals and postures more than anything else, and the reasoning behind his decisions is usually flimsy. Still, as he interns with a Native American medicine man, a cow-worshipping Indian patent-medicine huckster and, finally, with a surgeon, he moves toward his goal. Sermons on the evils of meat are leavened by Wylie's typically skewed logic: ""There is hardly a man or woman among us who would sacrifice an arm or a leg to feed the chickens."" A comical narrator and a fearless adventurer, Wylie is just the protagonist to stand the western genre on its head. Ages 12-up. (Feb.)