The book opens with Tex McCormick, a 15-year-old who loves horses, and his brother Mason (Mace), living in a country home in a small town.

Their mother died years before, and their father goes off for months at a time leaving Mace, a high school senior and a star basketball player, and Tex at home.

The children are forbidden to see Mason and Tex because the Collins patriarch, Cole, thinks they are a bad influence.

The New York Times praised Hinton's "[keen]" rendering of the American Southwest and her depiction of the "bewilderments of adolescence".

"[1] Kirkus Reviews affirmed that "the nerve she hit in The Outsiders can't be so tapped again" but commended Hinton for handling her "obvious exhortation, melodramatic plots, and brotherly bonds with that disarming empathy [...] which wins kids' unqualified assent.