Attempted murder is the beginning chapter of this western tale spun by Johnny D. Boggs. Deputy U.S. Marshal Reilly McGilvern is transporting outlaws to the Yuma prison. The prison wagon is attacked on the way by outlaws. Wanting to free a specific prisoner, three guards die in a hail of bullets poured in an ambush. The hated McGilvern is locked in the wagons cage and left to die without food or water. Another outlaw gang who are trying to continue the Civil War surprisingly saves him. Reilly’s problems multiply as the story continues to unfold.

The Civil War outlaw gang is lead by Bloody Jim Pardo. He is working on the assumption that Reilly is a ruthless criminal. This criminal gang has two hostages a mother and daughter that the gang is saving to sell south of the boarder. Needing to play his role perfectly Reilly’s life is open to all kinds of problems.  The problems grow as his trail mixes in with three major factors, which are the gang he is with, the hostages he is trying to save and the potential of running into the gang that tried to kill him in the beginning. Walking the thin line almost gets him killed several times.

Staying on the right side of the law and not getting killed is a major portion of this unique western that causes me to continue turning the pages and pushing toward Reilly’s ultimate solution. How he stops Bloody Jim Pardo and staying alive to free the hostages and eventually bringing retribution to the gang and its members who left him to die in the prison wagon cage.

I will recommend this western with an enthusiastic yes you should read this book. I felt that the story was fresh and gave a new dynamic to the black and white happenings on the western frontier. Johnny D. Boggs is definitely a western writer of distinction.

This western story begins in the Civil War and travels into the time shortly after the surrender of Lee at a courthouse in northern Virginia. The only way to get out of the prisoner of war stockade in Florence was to die. Men were dieing right and left with out food and shelter the cemetery outside the stockade was full and the wild hogs were having a field day digging up the bodies and eating the rotting flesh. Zeb Hogan had drawn the short straw and was elected by his comrades in arms to be the executioner of a fellow 16th Wisconsin Infantry prisoner who had turned into a rebel to get out of prison and escape the impending death of starvation and disease. So many were dieing that it was a simple task to be carted off to the death room where he would be buried as quickly as possible.

Surviving the grave was no easy task but with the help of Ebenezer Chase, Zeb escaped the grave. He now would need the help of this slave to find his way to Vicksburg Mississippi and full fill his sworn oath to kill sergeant Ben DeVere for the cowardly acts that he had committed in the Florence Stockade. Both main characters are young and Ebenezer, the slave, knows the country ways and Zeb knows the ways of the city. Together they are heading west each on their own mission but together. The story has many ups and downs as they move west and everything does not work out as originally expected. The trail they follow is over run with successes and failures but they continually push toward their destination. Both boys who have taken on the rolls of men continue to grow older in the ways of life discounting the few short years they have been on the earth.

I was very pleased with the story line and how the author Johnny D. Boggs was able to keep me involved and turning the pages of the book. I recommend this book to western readers and the civil war story readers also. Pick up this book and you will race to the end and not be disappointed.

This western story is about a man and his telling of the hardest winter ever. The story is told from the remembrances of Jim Hawkins to his grandson Henry Lancaster. Johnny D. Boggs tells the story about a boy who came to Montana and suffered through the winter of 1886 and into the spring of 1887. The story is told to a grandson from his grandfather.

The main narrator Jim Hawkins tells the story with many subplots and additional actions and events that happen and it covers the time period of the story. The tale begins in the spring of 1885 in the panhandle of Texas. The work this spring was a different kind of cowboy work. All hands were on the range skinning dead cattle that had piled up in arroyos and along fences. It was a dirty nasty work but it had to be done.

Three pards decided they wanted to do real cowboy work and to shake the smell of rotted flesh from their nose. They headed off to Montana to the land of open range and plenty of cowboy work. John Henry Kenton, Tommy O’Hallahan and Jim Hawkins left Texas to exercise their right to be cowboys in Montana. Being the oldest by more than twenty years John Henry held a temper barely in check but he was a true mentor and protector of Tommy and Jim.

Jim told his grandson Henry the story from beginning to end about the coldest and hardest winter he had ever lived thru. The beginning was how he became a cowboy and finally wandered north to Montana. Jim takes him to the places that were important spots in that winter to end all winter.

This was an interesting story but a hard one for me to write a review on. I definitely recommend this book to readers that are looking to find a true flavor of what could and did happen in the west when cowboys were young and things got really bad.

This western story is about a young Indian man who was spirited off to a vocational school in Pennsylvania many miles from his family and people. The story begins as the young man, Daniel Killstraight, returns to the area and is spirited off to a hanging in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. This hanging of three men is a traumatic experience but doubly so because he knew one of the men being hung. His friend’s mother is at the hanging. The final distance to the reservation was by wagon as he accompanies the mother of his dead friend and a Cherokee marshal who had brought his friend to court and was with him at the scaffold. There are many questions that the young Indian wants to answer. He promises to his friends mother that he will find out the truth and tell her what it is.

Getting a job on the reservation is a convenient coincidence as he is asked to be an Indian policeman. The questions are still illusive but Daniel struggles through a multitude of incidents that seem to be directed at him and ending his life. Who is responsible for the murders that his friend was accused and hung for? Everything seems to be aiming toward an early death for Daniel.

The story is a great accumulation of suspenseful events that are just begging for answers and the pages turn with very little effort. I recommend this story to western readers. Those who like a variance of flavor in their western reads will be intrigued.

This western story is written by Johnny D. Boggs who has won a spur award for one of his western stories. This story was interesting but I had a hard time getting involved while reading it. The style that it was written, made it hard to get into the flow of the story. The author wrote it as a diary of a boy covering a long period of time.

I definitely disagree with the dust jacket review of the story. The dust cover said it was about how a stage stop got its name. In my observation after reading the book it presented its self to me as a boys growth to maturity during a hard time in western history. The time was just prior to and during the Civil War involving a family, where the mother had died and the oldest son had gone to West Point. The oldest son graduates and become a Dragoon part of the Army protecting the travelers of the west. The complications of the beginning of the Civil War hits this family of strong minded men hard.  The impact was so complete that it threw them apart. Father against son and brother against brother which was a common happening during this time frame.

The story to me would have been more engaging and a better read for me if the style had been different. I would recommend this book to western readers who would like to view a different style of story telling. I am trying to evaluate all styles of writing as I progress on proof reading the story I wrote in the month of November.

This western story is written by Johnny D. Boggs a spur award – winning author. The story is set in the New Mexico Territory beginning in the fourteenth year of young Caleb Hart. He would be sent by his parents over twelve hundred miles to work for his uncle, Captain Frank Hart, on his ranch. The ranch was just about the biggest one in the Territory at the time.

Caleb Hart tells the story after thirty plus years had passed. He describes himself in the present and compares himself to how he was then. Looking at himself he is ashamed that he knew so little and called himself a green pea. His father and uncle were cowboys who rode and worked together. Caleb’s father got physically broken up and he had to leave the cowboy life because of broken bones and arthritis that completely took over his body. He assaulted Caleb with the stories of his past but Caleb took them as just yarns of a broken man with little or no truth in them.

The story is compelling and has many points of suspense which draws the reader into the intricacies of the situations created by the writer. If the reader is imbedded in western history the names and places ring the bells of famous people and places. The complexities of the simple western life give a reader the feeling that as time passes and we think we are so sophisticated yet we see and observe that the complexities of life really do not change very much as we push on into modern times.

This is an interesting western story with the constant Theme’s of western life. I would recommend the book as a western with strong values and the growth of a boy into a man. I enjoyed the book and it was a quick read.