Award-winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jeff Guinn will stop in at Country Bookshelf on Thursday, January 26th at 7pm in promotion of his upcoming Silver City: A Novel of the Great American West.
Renowned for the historical accuracy and narrative drive of his critically acclaimed nonfiction books, Guinn dazzled readers when he ventured into fiction for the first time with Glorious, which critics called “a tour de force of the Western Genre” (Big Sky Journal) and “catnip for ‘Lonesome Dove’ fans” (Seattle Times). His follow-up, Buffalo Trail, was hailed as “history-based Old West fiction at its finest” (Dallas Morning News) and “a masterful Western adventure” (Garden & Gun), and earned Guinn the 2016 TCU Texas Book Award. Now, reluctant frontiersman Cash McLendon returns in Silver City, the final installment in Guinn’s critically acclaimed series of the Old West, for a final showdown with a cold-blooded assassin and a last chance to win back the girl he loved and lost. McLendon, reluctant hero of the epic Indian battle at Adobe Walls, has journeyed to Mountain View in the Arizona Territory with one goal: to convince Gabrielle Tirrito that he’s a changed man, and win her back from school teacher Joe Saint. As they’re about to depart by stage for their new life in San Francisco, Gabrielle is kidnapped by Patrick Brautigan, the brutal enforcer known as “Killer Boots,” who is working on orders from crooked St. Louis businessman Rupert Douglass. Cash, once married to Douglass’ troubled daughter, fled the city when she died of accidental overdose—and Douglass vowed he’d track Cash down and make him pay. Now McLendon, accompanied by Joe Saint and Major Mulkins, hits the trail in pursuit of Gabrielle and Killer Boots, hoping to make a trade before it’s too late.
With the collusion of the criminal Clanton family (real-life historical figures best known for their involvement at the so-called “Gunfight at the OK Corral”), Brautigan will bring McLendon to the seedy settlement of Silver City, where the law is easily bought, and transfer to the nearest train line can readily be arranged. But Brautigan fails to take into account the grit and determination of Gabrielle; the combat skills of McLendon’s good friend Major Mulkins, a Civil War veteran; the devotion of Joe Saint to Gabrielle; the unexpected intervention of a band of Apaches led by a young man called Goyathlay, later known as Geronimo; and McLendon’s own resourcefulness—all of which lead to a conclusion as hair-raising and surprising as it is satisfying.
Jeff Guinn is the New York Times-bestselling author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including Buffalo Trail, Glorious, Manson, The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. His books have been Main Selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club; Manson was a New York Times Notable Book for 2013 and recognized as a Best Book of the Year by Amazon and People; and he is the only author to have been awarded the TCU Texas Book Award, which is given every two years to honor the best book published about Texas, twice (for Our Land Before We Die: The Proud Story of the Seminole Negro and Buffalo Trail). Currently, four of his books are under option for motion pictures or television miniseries. The former books editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and an award-winning investigative journalist, Guinn is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He lives in Fort Worth. •
