BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSTold from the memory of a man looking back on his boyhood, Shane follows young Bob Starrett, who lives with his parents on a small homestead in Wyoming's frontier valley in the summer of 1889. One afternoon a lone rider in dark clothes comes up the road and accepts the Starrett family's offer of water, a meal, and a bed in the barn. The stranger gives only one name, Shane, and nothing of his past. He stays on as a hired hand, and Bob watches him work alongside his father with a quiet, fluid power that hints at a history far beyond farming. When the valley's powerful cattle baron, Luke Fletcher, returns from the East with a contract and orders the homesteaders to sell out or leave, Shane becomes the still center of a gathering storm, and Bob senses that the man's gentle manner toward the family covers something deep and dangerous that may not stay hidden for long.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Shane
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Shane. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a homesteader split a leftover biscuit cleanly in two with the blade of his axe?
✓ Answer
Shane by Jack Schaefer
When Marian leaves an odd number of biscuits at the stump, Joe lets the axe fall gently on the lone leftover. The careful act shows how the two men have silently become equals through the long afternoon's work.
- First half
In what book does a boy ask his father if he could beat the hired hand in a fight?
✓ Answer
Shane by Jack Schaefer
Bob, feeling his oats after licking Ollie Johnson, asks Joe the boyish question. Joe answers that some men just plain have dynamite inside them and that the hired hand is one of those men.
- First half
In what book does a storekeeper tell his bartender that a man "was afraid of himself"?
✓ Answer
Shane by Jack Schaefer
Mr. Grafton corrects Will Atkey, who assumed the hired hand was a coward for ordering soda pop. Grafton sees that the man was holding back his own deadly nature, and he warns Will there is worse trouble coming.
- Second half
In what book does a boy sneak in for cookies and overhear his mother begging a drifter to stay?
✓ Answer
Shane by Jack Schaefer
Bob slips through his bedroom window after school to steal cookies from a tin. Instead he hides by the window and listens to Marian plead with the drifter not to leave.
- Second half
In what book is a settler named Ernie Wright shot down at a saloon bar?
✓ Answer
Shane by Jack Schaefer
Ernie Wright, baited beyond reason, calls Wilson a damned liar. Wilson's two bullets hit him before he can get off a shot, the first killing in the valley.
- Near the end
In what book does a cattle baron offer a farmer twelve hundred dollars and a foreman's job?
✓ Answer
Shane by Jack Schaefer
Fletcher rides up to the Starrett porch with Wilson and tries to buy Joe out, even offering him the foreman job. He demands an answer by that evening.
