Review Roundup: Riding with the Rangers

Lone Star Ranger 1: A Ranger to Ride With
By James J. Griffin
Painted Pony Books, April 2014
$8.09 paperback, ISBN 1497514045
$2.99 Kindle, ASIN B00JJ8NWOU
$2.99 most other e-formats, ISBN 9781310568404
120 pages

When fourteen-year-old Nate Stewart’s father uproots his family and moves them all from Delaware to a small farm and ranch in Texas, Nate doesn’t rebel. Instead, he mourns the loss of friends and the city life he understood. He was just discovering girls. He knew where he belonged in the pecking order, and everyone was safe in their homes.

Nothing is the same in Texas. The family lives in a dog-trot cabin far from the closest small town. They struggle to raise their own food, they have only one another for company, and the threat of outlaw and Indian raids looms on the outskirts of their existence. Even worse, Nate has no skills for living off the land and even less innate ability. Though his friends expressed excitement about the cowboy life—and his older brother lives it—Nate feels inept and useless.

All that changes when a surprise attack by some very bad men leaves Nate the sole survivor. When he balks at returning to Delaware to live with an aunt, uncle, and eight cousins he’s never admired, a company of Texas Rangers bends the rules and recruits him, promising more than a chance to avenge the death of everyone Nate held dear. The Rangers offer him a chance to become an honorable man.

Lone Star Ranger 1: A Ranger to Ride With, James J. Griffin’s first young-adult novel, offers few surprises to those familiar with the author’s work. The Rangers are tough as rawhide, the outlaws are as evil as they come, and the hero is a good-hearted man-to-be forced into a role he never intended to play. The tale is a throwback to the westerns of yore, when good and evil were easy to identify, tough frontier hombres had soft hearts, and villains always got their just desserts. Griffin is a master of the form.

Nate’s adventure is full of the gunfights, primitive living, and aw-shucks-ma’am joshing typical of Griffin’s stories. (Also typical is the way shirts disappear with reckless abandon.) As expected of this author’s work, the good guys possess unerring moral compasses and horses play a central role. Griffin, through the Ranger characters, spends quite a bit of time teaching Nate and readers how to care for and ride a cowboy’s best friend. The author also is crafty about imparting Texas Ranger history and lore, a subject about which he is an expert. Under the Rangers’ patient, protective tutelage, Nate grows into the cowboy he never thought he could be—and an estimable human being, to boot.

Texans will enjoy the book. Young readers will enjoy the book. Adults will enjoy it, too, thanks to a style that never condescends. The conclusion may be too open-ended for some, but if kids and their parents have half as much fun reading as Griffin evidently had writing, the cover price is a bargain.


Kathleen Rice Adams is a Texan, a voracious reader, a professional journalist, and an author. She received a review copy of Lone Star Ranger 1: A Ranger to Ride With from the publisher. Her opinions are her own and are neither endorsed nor necessarily supported by Western Fictioneers or individual members of the organization. Links in the review are for convenience only; they do not produce affiliate revenue.

Review Roundup: Outlaws in Training

Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid: Down the Owlhoot Trail
By J.E.S. Hays
Queerteen Press, April 2013
$14.50 paperback, ISBN 1482698838
$6.99 Kindle, ASIN B00C9G64EO
$6.99 most other e-formats, ISBN 9781611529012
244 pages

Two teens from disparate backgrounds band together in search of fame, fortune, and a place in the world. As they reinvent themselves along a trail to infamy (they hope), they encounter Indians, gamblers, scam artists, trigger-happy stagecoach guards, cowpunchers, and legendary ghosts, often with chuckle-worthy results.

In the thirteen-story anthology Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid: Down the Owlhoot Trail, author J.E.S. Hays brings together updated versions of two previous shorts (“Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid: The Beginning” and “Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid: The Spanish Treasure”) with eleven new tales presenting the further misadventures of two boys who, through their determination to leave a larger-than-life legacy, become closer than brothers and surprisingly well-rounded young men.

Hays is an expert at the art of descriptive writing that doesn’t bore readers. Instead of dumping large chunks of scenery and character description folks tend to skim, Hays weaves the surroundings and minor characters into the stories through the boys’ eyes. The settings and adventures come alive, taking in readers as a third partner in the aspiring owlhoots’ successes and failures. Be prepared for an uncommon perspective on the Old West.

Though the stories are rife with humor and—in spots—pathos, perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the writing is Hays’s talent for fresh, well-turned phrases. Readers will laugh out loud in some places, hold their breath in others, and commiserate when capers take a turn for the worse. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid have nothing on Dev and Sweet.

As befits the subject and the intended young-adult audience, Hays dispenses with deep symbolism in favor of a more literal approach. Consequently, the book is a quick read, but not because of superficiality. The characters and plots are wholly three-dimensional, making the stories as enjoyable for grownups as for older teens…even those who usually don’t read westerns.


Kathleen Rice Adams is a Texan, a voracious reader, a professional journalist, and an author. She received a review copy of Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid: Down the Owlhoot Trail from the author. Her opinions are her own and are neither endorsed nor necessarily supported by Western Fictioneers or individual members of the organization. Links in the review are for convenience only; they do not produce affiliate revenue.

SIX SENTENCE SATURDAY--KANE'S PROMISE by CHERYL PIERSON

Several months ago, I started to write a short story for a western anthology that I wanted to submit to. I had an idea that wouldn’t let me go, no matter how hard I tried to shake it off. But this story was to be a western, with no romance involved. My “what if” concerned the long reaching effects of an Indian massacre and kidnapping on a young white boy, Will Green.

To tell a story like that, I was going to have to be inside the boy’s head. So the story would have to be told from the first person POV—something I just never do. It’s always been a temptation of mine to write something in first person. But could I pull it off? First person, a boy, a child. I had to try, because there was just no other way to do it.

Once I began to write KANE’S REDEMPTION, I could see that the “short story” was not going to remain “short.” The word count limit for stories for the anthology was 5,000 per story. When I stopped to count, I was already at double that amount. I laid the story aside and started another shorter story in order to finish it in time to submit. But when I came back to KANE’S REDEMPTION, I was free to make it as long as it needed to be.

By the time the story ended at around 25,000 words, I knew that it truly wasn’t finished, even then. So much had happened to young Will and Jacobi Kane, the man who rescued him from the Apache, that I knew this was going to be a series of novellas. In the first book, Will and Jacobi forged quite a relationship, first of necessity and then of a father/son bond. But that relationship was only just beginning.

I wrote KANE’S PROMISE, the second story in the series, that carries them on into the next year of Will’s life. When a posse comes calling to ask Jacobi Kane to help them track the Apache, will he go? He’s made a promise to his first wife to avenge her, as she lay dying in his arms, but now he has other responsibilities.

Ten-year-old Will is torn between staying with his pregnant stepmother and following Jacobi. He must make a gut-wrenching decision. But they are a family now, and family helps one another, no matter what. Knowing firsthand what it's like to be at the mercy of this particularly brutal band of Apache, Will know what he must do. Though Jacobi might not want him along, Will knows that's where he belongs.

BLURB:

Kane's Promise, the second in a series of three, is the continuation of Kane's Redemption, the story of Will Green, a young boy whose family was murdered by the Apache, and Jacobi Kane, the man who rescued Will from the Indians.

In Kane's Promise, Jacobi Kane must lead a band of lawmen in their mission to find and annihilate the remnants of the Apache renegades who were responsible for killing Will's parents and Kane's wife and children.

But Will knows he belongs at Jacobi Kane's side—not left behind in the safety of the cabin. Once they find the Apaches, all hell breaks loose.

Can Kane protect Will and see this battle to a final end?

DISCLAIMER: I know it's SIX Sentence Saturday, but it's late and I am filling in for Matt Pizzolato who had to attend a funeral and wasn't able to make it today. So please forgive the longer excerpt.


EXCERPT SET UP:

Will and Jacobi are getting ready to leave Colbert’s Ferry Station when Marshal Eddington, one of Jacobi’s old nemeses, causes trouble. He has just insulted Jacobi in front of everyone, and Will, unable to stand Jacobi’s silence, jumps down from his horse and attacks the unsuspecting marshal. Jacobi pulls Will off, but Eddington draws Jacobi into the fight. Here’s what happens:

“I ought to kill you!” Eddington’s eyes were murderous, and now that I had regained my senses, it dawned on me I had made us an enemy for life by making him look foolish in front of the other men. He looked back and forth at me and Jacobi, so I wasn’t certain who he meant to kill, but I was pretty sure he meant me.

Jacobi turned to look at Eddington, rising swiftly to close the few steps between him and the marshal. “If you ever lay a hand on him, Oscar, you’ll answer to me.”

Eddington was busy wiping the blood off his face but he looked up at Jacobi, his thick lips twisting in a sneer. “Go on. Tell me you know a hundred ways to kill me, and all of ’em would make me wish I’d never come into the world at all!”

“You said it, Eddington. Not me.”

Eddington took a final disgusted swipe with his dirty bandana at the trail of blood that kept trickling from his nose.

“I believe ’em, Kane,” he spat. “All those rumors about you bein’ part Injun your own self. You’re no better’n Laughing Wind hisself. A murderin’—”

Jacobi jumped for Eddington, who had quickly gone for his knife. Jacobi landed squarely atop the marshal’s belly and delivered a hammering blow to his jaw at the same time. He easily knocked the marshal’s blade out of his hand as if it were child’s play. Eddington let out a loud “oomph” when Jacobi’s fist connected with his belly.

But Eddington had learned a few tricks of his own, and he was surprisingly quick to be as fat as he was. I’d always felt sorry for his horse, having to tote him all over creation, as heavy as he had to be.

Jacobi knew what Eddington’s next move would be before he made it, it seemed like. I’d only seen Jacobi fight twice before. The first time was when Red Eagle found us and tried to jump us. I could tell both Jacobi and Red Eagle knew they were fighting for their lives, but I couldn’t see much, bein’ as how it was in the middle of the night. The fight Jacobi and Laughing Wind had had was just as serious—a fight to the death, for Laughing Wind. But, in the heat of the battle that had been going on around me, I hadn’t absorbed the skill Jacobi had. The way he rolled and punched and parried Eddington’s blows was like some kind of a dance.

After a few seconds, it was all over. I knew it wouldn’t take Jacobi long to end what he’d started.
Eddington had stopped trying to fight and was covering his head, instead. He was making the little girl noises again. Jacobi had sure beat the hell out of him, and it made my heart glad. I reckoned Jacobi understood just how I’d felt only a few minutes ago. I knew there wouldn’t be one word of lecture from him about me tearing in to Marshal Eddington, when he’d gone and done the same thing his own self. He rolled away from Eddington and came to his feet, breathing hard and just looking at the marshal for a few seconds. Then, he reached down and picked up his hat, dusting it off.

The other men had all gathered around, and even Mrs. Colbert and her daughters had come outside and stood watching. Marshal Eddington began to holler like a wild man when he saw everyone watching him.
“I’ve got witnesses! Kane, you’re going to pay, one way or another! You and that whelp of yours—”
Jacobi took a step forward, planting his foot squarely on Eddington’s wounded thigh, directly over the bullet hole.

“Son of a bitch!” Eddington screamed. He tried to roll, but Jacobi dropped to his knees, grabbing Eddington’s arm and twisting as he kept his weight on the wound.

“Don’t threaten me, Eddington. Never, ever threaten my family, or me.” He leaned close and spoke so softly no one else but me and Marshal Eddington could hear. “Don’t force me to pick one of those ‘hundred ways’, Marshal. I promise you, I will do it.”
****
Today I’m giving away a copy of KANE’S PROMISE to one lucky commenter. Please leave a comment along with your contact info to be entered—easy, huh?

You can find KANE’S PROMISE as well as KANE’S REDEMPTION and the thrilling conclusion of the Kane stories, KANE'S DESTINY here at my Amazon site:
Cheryl's Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/cherylpierson
Kane’s Redemption,Kane’s Promise, and Kane's Destiny are available at Barnes and Noble for Nook, as well.

Don’t forget to leave a comment to enter the drawing for a copy of KANE’S PROMISE.