A girl, a priest, and a hunchback are standing under a cherry tree......Really, that's how it starts.

I was curious about what a bestselling and now obscure book from 1900 would be like, and it's....not too bad. The plot felt like a complete cliche, but the characters were distinctive and drawn with surprising subtlety, despite representing familiar archetypes. Thompson's writing is decent, and he knows how to write action scenes.

Unfortunately, the level of racism, mostly directed at Native Americans, struck me as somewhat exceeding the standards of the time and was both obnoxious in its pettiness and disturbing in its callousness.