Friar Tuck: Being the Chronicles of the Reverend John Carmichael, of Wyoming, U. S. a.

Meet Friar Tuck: not the Sherwood Forest outlaw, but Reverend John Carmichael of Wyoming, a singing, philosophizing minister who rides through the untamed American West dispensing unexpected wisdom and bad puns in equal measure. Narrated by his old friend Happy Hawkins, who admits he'll start telling a story himself rather than ask for one, the novel unfolds as a series of warm, funny reminiscences about this unconventional man of the cloth. The Friar has a captivating voice and a philosophy that leans into life's absurdities rather than fighting them. He arrives in various towns, wins over skeptics with his odd wisdom, and leaves changed people in his wake. Set during the closing years of the frontier when the West was still wild enough to feel like another country, Wason's novel is a gentle comedy about male friendship, the peculiar grace of people who refuse to take themselves too seriously, and the strange poetry of everyday kindness on the margins of civilization. The dialect and tall tale conventions give it the texture of oral storytelling, as if Happy is sitting next to you at a saloon, just talking.