Other editions of book True Grit: A Novel

True Grit is the most famous novel of Charles Portis and the basis for the movie of the same name starring John Wayne. It tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's death. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshall, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into the Indian territory.

This title is now a major film written and directed by the Coen Brothers. Narrated by bestselling American author Donna Tartt, who brings "True Grit" - her favourite book - to life with perfect intonation, insight and suspense. There is no knowing what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by Torn Chancy, who shoots him down for a horse, $150 cash, and two gold pieces. Ross' single-minded teenage daughter, Mattie, travels to claim his body...Then she meets Rooster - a man with grit - and persuades him to join her on a deadly quest to avenge her father's murder. This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the author's work and as low as 30 per cent with characters and plotlines removed.

With its excitement, its aliveness, its comic sympathy and originality, True Grit swoops the reader up and gallops him off into a classic American Landscape, freshly and brilliantly perceived.The action – and what action! - begins on page 1, as Mattie Ross, a fourteen year old girl from Dardanelle Arkansas, sets out in the winter of eighteen seventy something to avenge her Daddy, treacherously shot to death by a no-good drunken outlaw. Since not even Mattie ( who is no self-doubter) would ride into Indian Territory alone, she “convinces” one-eyed “Rooster” Cogburn, the meanest available U. S. Marshall, to tag along with her.As Mattie outdickers and outmaneuvers the hard-bitten types whose first reaction is to “run home, little britches, your mama wants you,” as her performance under fire makes them eat their words, her indestructible vitality and harsh innocence by turns amuse, horrify and touch the reader. What happens – to Rooster, to Mattie, to the gang of outlaws unfortunate enough to tangle with her – rings with the dramatic rightness of legend and the marvelous overtones, the continual surprises, of personality.True Grit, is eccentric, cool, straight and unflinching, like Mattie herself, who tells the story a half-century later in a voice that sounds strong and sure enough to outlast us all. It was a voice quite heard before and at the same time instantly recognizably as totally original and totally alive.True Grit is a 1968 novel by Charles Portis that was first published as a 1968 serial in The Saturday Evening Post. 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. It is considered by some critics to be "one of the great American novels."The novel was adapted for the screenplay of the 1969 film True Grit starring Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, and John Wayne. 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.