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Baker's Hawk
HARDCOVER
- GenresFiction
233 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1974
About the author
Jack M. Bickham
66 books45 followersPseudonyms:
Jeff Clinton, John Miles, Arthur Williams
Jeff Clinton, John Miles, Arthur Williams
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 25, 2021
An excellent young adult novel about a young teenage boy, a hawk, a hermit, and a nineteenth century town teeming the vigilante justice and hate. It was made into a film starring Clint Walker and Burl Ives.
September 3, 2026
I give this five stars, and I should say up front that one of those stars belongs to nostalgia. I first met the story as a teenager through the film and loved it, even though most of the symbolism sailed right past me. Ten years after I loaded the novel onto my book drive, I finally listened to it as an adult. That second encounter was the real pleasure: I could follow the symbolism this time, and I could sit with the juxtaposition that gives the book its force — a small town tightening its fist on one side of the mountain, and a hawk learning to fly on the other.
The story belongs to Billy Baker. It opens with him as an attorney traveling through country he knew as a boy. A red-tailed hawk overhead pulls him twelve years back, to a summer out of school, when he pulled an injured hawk away from a fox and, in desperation, carried it to the man the town called crazy. McGraw is not crazy. He is a loner who loves wild animals and does what he can for the injured ones he finds. He is not a predator and not a pervert. He and Billy become friends because the bird gives them a reason to trust each other.
The town around them is having growing pains. New people arrive with different ideas, and many of the long-time residents do not trust the match. They worry about miners and squatters who want a share of the place without taking on the costs of belonging. A vigilante group forms to run those people out and protect a way of life. Billy’s father, Dan, will not join. He believes a vigilance committee starts with a decent aim and then slides into a mob. The mission creeps. Protection turns into conduct that sits well outside the law. Dan holds that line and pays for it. He loses his credit at the store. Neighbors who first stood with him sign up anyway. The sheriff is a heavy man, and the vigilantes treat his size as one more sign that the law cannot protect them. He pins a deputy’s badge on Dan and hopes a man who still believes in the law can quiet the rest.
Billy and Dan are growing, too, and the growth puts strain on both of them. Billy wants his father’s approval. He also wants a life that is his. The hawk becomes the emblem of that passage. It is wild and still capable of a kind of love. It will take training, and it still wants the independence that lets it become what it was built to be. Billy is made of the same mix. He wants teaching. He also wants a quiet independence his father cannot give him until the relationship itself changes.
Billy has no real choice about McGraw. Dan has already forbidden another wild animal on the place, so the injured hawk has to go up the mountain. Together they save it. The book walks you through the work in patient detail — how they teach the bird to pounce, how it learns to tear meat with its talons, what tools they use. I cannot vouch for every step as field science, but I never caught a reason to distrust it. While they work, McGraw hands Billy the kind of plain wisdom a boy can carry forward. On one visit Billy brings his friend Jeremy, so Jeremy can see the hawk and watch the training.
The town’s campaign does not stay theoretical. An adolescent bully threatens Billy and McGraw. The hawk answers. It slashes the boy’s throat with its talons. The bully lives, and he sets out to make life worse for the hermit, the boy, and the bird. For a while he succeeds. The vigilantes decide McGraw has to go. He does not see the world their way, so they call him an evil influence and prepare to burn him out.
I needed this book for reasons that have nothing to do with hawks. I have grown uneasy about my own habit of keeping the peace by looking away. I have started to see how quickly I pass snap judgments on people who do not share my view of things. Those judgments are nearly always wrong, and they open cracks that did not have to be there. This story reminded me that peace among neighbors depends on a slower, less certain kind of attention — the willingness to live beside difference without turning it into a threat. The hawk is nothing like Billy or McGraw, and they still reach it. McGraw’s hardest lesson is also the cleanest: the bird will never be entirely tame. If Billy is going to love it, he has to respect its need to leave.
I loved the ending and I will not describe it. Some readers will call it contrived. I thought it was the right last note. What pleases me most is that the book has not gone stale. Vigilantism still tempts people on more than one side of our arguments, and we could do worse than learn from a boy, an old hermit, and a hawk that finally takes the air the way it was meant to.
The story belongs to Billy Baker. It opens with him as an attorney traveling through country he knew as a boy. A red-tailed hawk overhead pulls him twelve years back, to a summer out of school, when he pulled an injured hawk away from a fox and, in desperation, carried it to the man the town called crazy. McGraw is not crazy. He is a loner who loves wild animals and does what he can for the injured ones he finds. He is not a predator and not a pervert. He and Billy become friends because the bird gives them a reason to trust each other.
The town around them is having growing pains. New people arrive with different ideas, and many of the long-time residents do not trust the match. They worry about miners and squatters who want a share of the place without taking on the costs of belonging. A vigilante group forms to run those people out and protect a way of life. Billy’s father, Dan, will not join. He believes a vigilance committee starts with a decent aim and then slides into a mob. The mission creeps. Protection turns into conduct that sits well outside the law. Dan holds that line and pays for it. He loses his credit at the store. Neighbors who first stood with him sign up anyway. The sheriff is a heavy man, and the vigilantes treat his size as one more sign that the law cannot protect them. He pins a deputy’s badge on Dan and hopes a man who still believes in the law can quiet the rest.
Billy and Dan are growing, too, and the growth puts strain on both of them. Billy wants his father’s approval. He also wants a life that is his. The hawk becomes the emblem of that passage. It is wild and still capable of a kind of love. It will take training, and it still wants the independence that lets it become what it was built to be. Billy is made of the same mix. He wants teaching. He also wants a quiet independence his father cannot give him until the relationship itself changes.
Billy has no real choice about McGraw. Dan has already forbidden another wild animal on the place, so the injured hawk has to go up the mountain. Together they save it. The book walks you through the work in patient detail — how they teach the bird to pounce, how it learns to tear meat with its talons, what tools they use. I cannot vouch for every step as field science, but I never caught a reason to distrust it. While they work, McGraw hands Billy the kind of plain wisdom a boy can carry forward. On one visit Billy brings his friend Jeremy, so Jeremy can see the hawk and watch the training.
The town’s campaign does not stay theoretical. An adolescent bully threatens Billy and McGraw. The hawk answers. It slashes the boy’s throat with its talons. The bully lives, and he sets out to make life worse for the hermit, the boy, and the bird. For a while he succeeds. The vigilantes decide McGraw has to go. He does not see the world their way, so they call him an evil influence and prepare to burn him out.
I needed this book for reasons that have nothing to do with hawks. I have grown uneasy about my own habit of keeping the peace by looking away. I have started to see how quickly I pass snap judgments on people who do not share my view of things. Those judgments are nearly always wrong, and they open cracks that did not have to be there. This story reminded me that peace among neighbors depends on a slower, less certain kind of attention — the willingness to live beside difference without turning it into a threat. The hawk is nothing like Billy or McGraw, and they still reach it. McGraw’s hardest lesson is also the cleanest: the bird will never be entirely tame. If Billy is going to love it, he has to respect its need to leave.
I loved the ending and I will not describe it. Some readers will call it contrived. I thought it was the right last note. What pleases me most is that the book has not gone stale. Vigilantism still tempts people on more than one side of our arguments, and we could do worse than learn from a boy, an old hermit, and a hawk that finally takes the air the way it was meant to.
March 24, 2017
This is really a beautiful story and shows that friendships come in all shapes and sizes.
March 6, 2022
I had read this book years ago when my son read it for a middle school class. I had forgotten most of the story, and this was like reading a book for the first time.
August 3, 2011
Review: Baker’s Hawk by Jack Bickham
Back in 1983, when I was 14 and feathered hair was cooler than feathered wings, I stumbled across Jack Bickham’s Baker’s Hawk. And let me tell you: this book holds up better than most of my fashion choices from that decade.
The setup is deceptively simple: Billy Baker, a 12-year-old frontier kid, finds an injured hawk and does what any unsupervised child in the 19th century might—adopts it. Naturally, this means seeking help from the town recluse, Mr. McGraw, who’s rumored to be part animal whisperer, part scary hermit. Instead of a horror story, we get a touching alliance between an awkward boy, a misunderstood man, and a bird with more attitude than a teenager blasting MTV.
But here’s the hook: this isn’t just about falconry. (Though, spoiler, the hawk-training details are weirdly fascinating.) It’s about courage, prejudice, and learning to see past the labels your neighbors slap on people. Billy grows up fast, torn between his father’s role as the town leader and the mob mentality brewing among folks who’d rather run McGraw out of town than admit he might actually be decent.
And yes, Hollywood noticed—Baker’s Hawk fluttered onto screens with Clint Walker as Dad and Burl Ives as McGraw. That’s right, Burl “Holly Jolly Christmas” Ives playing a mountain hermit. If that mental image doesn’t make you want to read the book first, I don’t know what will.
Why dust this one off today? Because it’s a reminder that family-friendly adventure doesn’t have to be fluffy. It’s got grit, it’s got heart, and it’s got a hawk who basically steals every scene. Perfect for young readers, nostalgic grownups, or anyone who thinks “retro YA” deserves a comeback.
Verdict: Baker’s Hawk is the kind of story that sneaks up on you—quietly powerful, unexpectedly relevant, and way cooler than that neon shirt I swore was stylish in 1983.
Back in 1983, when I was 14 and feathered hair was cooler than feathered wings, I stumbled across Jack Bickham’s Baker’s Hawk. And let me tell you: this book holds up better than most of my fashion choices from that decade.
The setup is deceptively simple: Billy Baker, a 12-year-old frontier kid, finds an injured hawk and does what any unsupervised child in the 19th century might—adopts it. Naturally, this means seeking help from the town recluse, Mr. McGraw, who’s rumored to be part animal whisperer, part scary hermit. Instead of a horror story, we get a touching alliance between an awkward boy, a misunderstood man, and a bird with more attitude than a teenager blasting MTV.
But here’s the hook: this isn’t just about falconry. (Though, spoiler, the hawk-training details are weirdly fascinating.) It’s about courage, prejudice, and learning to see past the labels your neighbors slap on people. Billy grows up fast, torn between his father’s role as the town leader and the mob mentality brewing among folks who’d rather run McGraw out of town than admit he might actually be decent.
And yes, Hollywood noticed—Baker’s Hawk fluttered onto screens with Clint Walker as Dad and Burl Ives as McGraw. That’s right, Burl “Holly Jolly Christmas” Ives playing a mountain hermit. If that mental image doesn’t make you want to read the book first, I don’t know what will.
Why dust this one off today? Because it’s a reminder that family-friendly adventure doesn’t have to be fluffy. It’s got grit, it’s got heart, and it’s got a hawk who basically steals every scene. Perfect for young readers, nostalgic grownups, or anyone who thinks “retro YA” deserves a comeback.
Verdict: Baker’s Hawk is the kind of story that sneaks up on you—quietly powerful, unexpectedly relevant, and way cooler than that neon shirt I swore was stylish in 1983.
January 31, 2017
This is a very good story, especially for a young adult. It centers around a boy in the west during the late 1800s and invokes its share of morals and virtues that a teen would be going through.
As I finished the book I was a little sad because I realize that it might be incredibly difficult for people younger than I to relate to the story, especially the setting and environment. My hope is that stories like this still move people to some emotion, but that's less likely now. All in all though a very nice story.
As I finished the book I was a little sad because I realize that it might be incredibly difficult for people younger than I to relate to the story, especially the setting and environment. My hope is that stories like this still move people to some emotion, but that's less likely now. All in all though a very nice story.
February 21, 2013
This was an exciting coming of age story about a boy and his relationship with his father, his community, and the wild animals he cares for. When I first picked it up and saw the cover blurb which equated this book with "Where the Red Fern Grows" I thought to myself, well, I doubt that! I don't doubt it any longer. Had I read this back when I was in grade school I would have treasured it just as much. Great story, wonderfully told.
March 1, 2016
Jack Bickham, RDC-M #2, 1975, 2/80. Animal story. Okay.
June 27, 2013
This was a heartwarming story of a young boy coming of age.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews