Colton is taken through the traditional rites of passage of the old West — shooting his first deer, breaking a wild mare, following small-time rodeos with a friend to have ‘a whole bunch of fun’. In these ways, in the fierce heat of summer and the even fiercer cold of winter, Colton experiences ‘America born again in all its sentimental, painful bravado’. He gets married and they have two sons. Colton continues to exclaim ‘Holy crap!’ unworriedly and to laugh a lot, ‘He-he-he,’ and it becomes uncomfortably obvious that he is about to be stricken by disaster. He works two-week shifts on an oil rig. On her very first page, Fuller has warned of tragedy, and here it comes.

Finally, in a properly indignant Author’s Note, she blames Colton’s fatal fall on his employer’s cost-paring safety violations. Having got to know Colton so well in this colourfully written case history, the reader will deplore any industrial attempt to dismiss him as a mere statistic.

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