Lasky carefully treats sensitive issues in The Bone Wars. The first of these is violence. There is no way to honestly portray the American frontier, particularly that of the 1870s, without admitting that the vast plains of the West could hide the lawless as well as the law-abiding, and that there were people who took advantage of the fact. The opening chapter does include a murder of a defenseless woman, but it is told from the standpoint of a five-year-old hidden safely in an old quilt under the bed. The only facts of the crime scene that haunt little Thad are a couple of remarks overheard as he is taken from under the bed and cradled in Mr. Jim's arms, eyes averted from his mother's dead form. Those remarks come back to him in nightmares for years and years after. This chapter is less graphic and...