Revolver: Library Edition

In an isolated cabin in an Arctic wilderness, 14-year-old Sig is alone with a corpse: his father who has fallen through the ice on the lake outside and frozen to death only hours earlier. His sister and stepmother have gone to fetch help. Then, out of the Arctic darkness, comes a stranger: a rough giant of a man claiming that Sig's father owes him a share of a horde of stolen gold--and threatening terrible violence if Sig doesn't reveal the gold's whereabouts. Sig knows nothing about the gold, but he does know that there's a loaded Colt revolver hidden in the cabin's storeroom--a gun that his father had said would protect him and taught him to use, but which his mother had abhorred, telling him to have faith in God's protection instead. Revolver jumps between the lonely cabin and the events of the Alaska Gold Rush ten years earlier, gradually unspooling the mystery of the stolen gold and the terrifying stranger. Written with the intensity and precision of a one-act play, this dramatic novel turns on whether and when Sig will use the hidden gun, and his reasons for doing so.