Midnight Road

Set in West Texas in 1930, this posthumous coming-of-age novel from Davis (1919%E2%80%931996), author of the noir classic One for Hell, offers a simple but effective storyline. Old Trails, a man notorious for his futile searches for lost mines, tells 15-year-old Jeff Carr about witnessing a bull buffalo and a camel at a watering hole, drinking "side by side like brothers," before departing together. Intrigued, Carr goes one night with Trails' 16-year-old daughter, Sam, to the watering hole, where they camp, make love, and see the same sight that her father did. Soon after, Indians kill the two animals, the camel dying unafraid, "curious in its innocence." That tension between innocence and life's grim realities drives the often-violent action, as Carr deals with the normal challenges of adolescence. Memorable prose is a plus ("Somewhere a bird chirped, but only once, as though the chirp was not intended and not in tune with the stillness of the day"). (Feb.)