Jess Walter's SO FAR GONE opens with a striking scene. Rhys Kinnick opens his front door to discover two children, accompanied by a woman. At first, he doesn't think he knows any of them. But then the boy tells him, "We're your grandchildren."

Nine-year-old Asher and his 13-year-old sister, Leah --- whom Rhys hasn't seen since they were very young --- have been brought to his doorstep by a neighbor after Leah informed her that their mother (Rhys' daughter, Bethany) has gone missing. The children's father, Shane (whom Rhys once punched during an especially heated Thanksgiving dinner after the 2016 election), has grown increasingly entangled with a militaristic Christian nationalist organization, to the point that he's been threatening to move the family from Spokane to the church's compound in rural Idaho, and to betroth Leah to the pastor's college-aged son.

"This is a western with a big heart and a sense of both justice and compassion. And in the character of Rhys, Walter shows readers someone who relearns how to love his fellow human, almost in spite of himself."

That 2016 fight is a big part of the reason Rhys hasn't seen his grandchildren since. After that altercation (compounded by all the cultural and political rancor underpinning it), Rhys, a former journalist, decided to chuck his cell phone out the window and make a new life, inspired by Thoreau, deep in the woods outside Spokane on a small piece of land that's been in his family for generations. There, surrounded by his books, he's lived in near isolation for years. Not only is he being belatedly reintroduced to his grandkids, they break the news that his former wife Celia, Bethany's mom, recently died.

Initially taken aback by the children's presence, Rhys steps up and offers to care for them temporarily. Almost before he realizes what's happening, he's developed a real fondness for them, especially for the loveably dorky Asher, an aspiring chess master.

However, a trip to a chess tournament in Spokane turns disastrous when Rhys, Leah and Asher are confronted by a group of thugs from Shane's church, who beat up Rhys and take the children away. This time, rather than retreat to his woodland shelter, Rhys ventures back out into the world, calling in some old friends and colleagues to help him figure out where the kids might be held and where Bethany might have gone --- and why.

SO FAR GONE is garnering a lot of comparisons to the work of Charles Portis, the author most famously of TRUE GRIT, whose combination of dry wit, memorably offbeat characters, and sometimes outlandish situations certainly can be seen in this new release (and Walter makes the connection explicit when he lists Portis among the authors on Rhys' shelves). And although the book does include a kidnapping plot, multiple shoot-outs, and lots of road-tripping through the Northwest, it's not just a western. It's actively engaged with the issues of our time, including the sometimes violent entanglement of religion, intolerance and politics.

The action comes at readers at full throttle in this relatively slim novel --- so much so that it can be difficult to remember to pause now and again, to marvel at the ways in which Walter slyly incorporates both humor and weightier themes. This is a western with a big heart and a sense of both justice and compassion. And in the character of Rhys, Walter shows readers someone who relearns how to love his fellow human, almost in spite of himself.