Edward Packard

Deadwood City is a very decent entry in the CYOA series, and makes some interesting choices with the second-person narrative. Books in the series tend to switch back and forth between portraying the reader in illustrations as an adult and as a child, and this one chooses to incorporate the latter in a (somewhat) realistic historical setting. Edward Packard has avoided time caves and space travel this time, with the reader simply riding a lone horse into the book's titular town.

It's also interesting that the illustrations chose to feature a young girl in the role instead of a boy, seeking out jobs as a cattle rancher, stagecoach guard, or outlaw. This isn't that unusual for the western genre, but it is always encouraging to find children's authors willing to step outside of traditional gender roles.

Finally, Packard does a commendable job at maintaining a good/bad ending balance with plenty of "dead" ends, but without having any of those reader demises involve being shot. While there is gunplay, and the occasional vague implication of a shooting death, the vast majority of endings involve the reader moving on with their lives and settling down. Acknowledging the existence and use of guns without playing into the exploitation of gun violence is a fine tightrope walk.… (more)