It's been a long time since there's been such a plain-and-simple, head-over-heels love story as this one. It's about a good girl who falls so in love with a bad boy that she forsakes everything to ride with him -- outlaw and fugitive that he is. Lily DeLony, fifteen, tells her very one-sided version of what happened on Christmas Eve night 1883 in the town of McDade, Texas, when a vigilante group made up of ordinary citizens struck against a gang of outlaws. One of the outlaw gang was the love of young Lily's life. One of the vigilantes was her father. The DeLony family is churchgoing, Godfearing, hardworking, controlled. The father's word is law and is seldom spoken softly. But Lily was raised to meet the challenge of hard work. She's a strong, upright girl who knows the rules of virtue and righteousness. And follows them.Follows them, that is, until she meets Marion "Shot" Beatty, youngest of the Beatty brothers.By the end of the story, Lily has forsaken all that for the love of Shot Beatty and an unknown future -- one that includes a pistol in Lily's skirt pocket.Lily's telling of this tale is characterized by her spirit, her will, her fearlessness, and the endearing gullibility of youth. Utterly convincing, utterly beguiling, LILY introduces a wonderful new writer with an ear for a certain kind of voice not heard so clearly since Charles Portis's TRUE GRIT.