The expression 'riding shotgun' is derived from ' shotgun messenger', a colloquial term for 'express messenger', when stagecoach travel was popular during the American Wild West and the Colonial period in Australia. The coining of this phrase dates to 1905 at the latest. In modern use, it refers to the practice of sitting alongside the driver in a moving vehicle. ' Riding shotgun' was a phrase used to describe the bodyguard who rides alongside a stagecoach driver, typically armed with a break-action shotgun, called a coach gun, to ward off bandits or hostile Native Americans. Sitting next to the driver in a moving vehicle.With shades of Mattie Ross but an intelligence and fervor all her own, she is unforgettable.

“In Polly McClusky, the eleven-year-old girl at the heart of his darkly irresistible debut novel She Rides Shotgun, Jordan Harper gives us a hero for our times. Nate takes Polly to save her life, but in the end it may very well be Polly who saves him. She Rides Shotgun is a gripping and emotionally wrenching novel that upends even our most long-held expectations about heroes, villains, and victims.

But can their powerful bond transcend the dangerous existence he’s carved out for them? Will they ever be able to live an honest life, free of fear? Nate, in turn, learns what it’s like to love fiercely and unconditionally-a love he’s never quite felt before. She finds herself transforming from a shy little girl into a true fighter. Out on the lam, Polly is forced to grow up early: with barely any time to mourn her mother, she must learn how to take a punch and pull off a drug-house heist. Nate and Polly’s lives soon become a series of narrow misses, of evading the bad guys and the police, of sleepless nights in motels.

They’ve already murdered his ex-wife, Polly’s mother. Nate made dangerous enemies in prison-a gang called Aryan Steel has put out a bounty on his head, counting on its members on the outside to finish him off. He takes her from the front of her school into a world of robbery, violence, and the constant threat of death. A propulsive, gritty novel about a girl marked for death who must fight and steal to stay alive, learning from the most frightening man she knows-her fatherĮleven-year-old Polly McClusky is shy, too old for the teddy bear she carries with her everywhere, when she is unexpectedly reunited with her father, Nate, fresh out of jail and driving a stolen car.

She rode shotgun