Bless the Beasts and Children (novel)

Bless the Beasts and Children is a 1970 novel by Glendon Swarthout that tells the story of several emotionally disturbed boys away at summer camp who unite to stop a buffalo hunt. The 151-page (192 pages in paperback, first edition) book covers some social issues of the 1960s and 1970s. It was published by Doubleday and Co.

An unabridged audiobook recording of the novel was released in 2005 by Books on Tape and read by Scott Brick.

Six emotionally disturbed teenage boys are sent from their homes throughout the United States by their affluent parents to Box Canyon Boys Camp near Prescott, Arizona, as the camp's slogan was "Send us a boy - we'll send you a cowboy", and the parents hoped that the camp would mature the boys. Each having originally been assigned to one of the six cabins, they are quickly outcast by the other campers, and find themselves together in one cabin. After a contest between the six cabins sorts out the pecking order, their cabin naturally lands in last place. The boys, in accordance with the camp rules, do manage to raid all of the superior cabins and conquer the trophies of the higher ranking cabins in order to advance in rank, but they use badly executed subterfuge that is looked down upon by the other campers.

Five of the six cabins were named after various Native American tribes and awarded mounted animal heads corresponding to each of the cabins' ranks, which are, from highest to lowest ranks:

All of the Bedwetters refer to each other by last names in the book and movie, including the two Lally brothers, who are referred to as Lally 1 and Lally 2, although their first names are mentioned in the book.

An unpleasant confrontation between the boys and their counselor ends with Teft breaking into their counselor's footlocker, and because of the whiskey, beer, cigarettes and pornography found in the footlocker, they blackmail the counselor, who is called "Wheaties", into taking them to a ranch where they witness a canned hunt of surplus bison that had been rounded up from the surrounding area. The hunters (who won their spots at that hunt via lottery) sat or stood along a fence, while shooting at the fenced-in, nearly tame bison.

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