Brave and Bold was the first in a new series of Alger novels published by Loring, and the first in which sex rears its head. Before Brave and Bold, the girls of the hero's age were sisters or simply prop figures. In this new book, Hester Paine, the lovely daughter of Millville's most prominent citizen and the reigning village belle, becomes a source of fascination and contention for "factory boy" hero Robert Rushton and his nemesis, the rich, snobbish, kid glove-wearing youth Halbert Davis. Brave and Bold hit a new high in Alger's work, according Edwin Hoyt, but Hoyt describes the story as a "fiasco".[3] Gary Scharnhorst describes it as "horrifying", and lists a shooting, a stabbing, and a suicide among the book's elements.[4] The book was reviewed by a reader of the children's magazine St. Nicholas; he described it as "of the sensational order" and was glad he did not meet its characters in real life. This was the last review of an Alger work published by the prestigious magazine. The book initiated the controversy over making Alger's works available to the young.