While the setting of this brilliant novel is presumably Hinton's native Tulsa or modeled closely on it, and the specific social circumstances of the teen milieu she depicts, with its sharp and often violent class conflict between the spoiled, nihilistic upper crust versus the angry, socially/economically circumscribed white underclass, may (or in some places, may not) have changed since the 60s, the themes she addresses here are absolutely universal and timeless: the universality of human feelings, needs, and worth regardless of artificial divisions; the need --and ability-- that every human being has to make his/her own moral decisions and character, regardless of external social circumstances; the value of family ties and friendship; and the transcendent reality that some behaviors are innately right and others wrong, depending on how they treat other people. Through the utterly realistic characters she creates, and the perfectly crafted plot she constructs around them, Hinton conveys her message with an artistry not found among many authors in their 50s and 60s, let alone their teens. She writes thoroughly believable dialogue, and conjures the gritty atmosphere of a lower-class urban neighborhood, without resorting to profanity or cheapening her work with gratuitous sex. And while she conveys a keen consciousness of social injustice, she does not reduce her characters to puppets of social circumstances, nor reduce the personal to the political.

Though the publishing industry marketed (and still markets) this book to teens, there is nothing "juvenile" or "kiddish" about it that merits patronizing treatment by older readers or critics. On the contrary, while teen readers continue to embrace the book, it's a work of serious fiction as appropriate for adults as well as any of the books marketed to them --and a better read with more constructive content than most of those, to boot. In short, this is descriptive fiction as it should be written. Forty years is a short period from which to judge the enduring significance of a novel; but I predict that this one will stand the test of time, and that one day a sane critical community (if we ever have one :-)) will rank it as a crown jewel of the Realist tradition, and of American fiction.