True Grit by Charles Portis

True Grit is a 1968 novel by Charles Portis that was first published as a 1968 serial in The Saturday Evening Post. The novel True Grit is told from the perspective of a woman named Mattie Ross who recounts the time when she was 14 years old and sought retribution for the murder of her father by a scoundrel named Tom Chaney..
Charles Portis' novel True Grit, considered by many critics to be "one of the great American novels", is narrated by Mattie Ross, a thrifty, churchgoing older spinster distinguished by intelligence, independence and strength of mind. Speaking in 1928, she recounts the story of her adventures many years earlier, when, at the age of fourteen, she undertook a quest to avenge her father’s death at the hands of a drifter named Tom Chaney. She is joined by Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn and a Texas Ranger. As Mattie's tale begins, Chaney is employed on the Ross’ family farm in west central Arkansas, near the town of Dardanelle in Yell County. Chaney is not adept as a farmhand, and Mattie has only scorn for him, referring to him as "trash", and noting that her kind-hearted father, Frank, only hired him out of pity. One day, Frank Ross and Chaney go to Fort Smith to buy some horses. Ross takes $250 with him to pay for the horses, along with two gold pieces he always carried. He ends up spending only $100 on the horses. When Ross tries to intervene in a barroom confrontation involving Chaney, Chaney kills him, robs the body of the remaining $150 and two gold pieces, and flees into Indian Territory on his horse... (Summary by Wikipedia)