Caprock, Texas, is a sleepy cow town until oil is discovered in the 1920s. Suddenly thousands of people stream in to find their fortune; some are honest folk, but too many are two-bit swindlers. This is the story of how an entire community draws together to save itself.

"Naked Came the Stranger" set the format, but not always the tone or subject matter, for a whole string of books that appeared in the 1970s. Called collaborative or serial novels, the multi-author works were set in the suburbs, the Blue Ridge Mountains, Florida, the American West, but never in Texas. Now a dozen Texas authors have gotten together to create a good old-fashioned western novel. Each contributing author will write a chapter that builds on the work that precedes his or her chapter.
The plot features Noah, a plantation slave who escapes and makes his way to the Union forces...

No water ever tasted better than when it came up clear and cool from deep in the ground, its flow pulsing to the steady rhythm of the wind-driven pump. . . . Windmill men such as Tex Burdick and others described in Baker s narrative deserve much credit for making life possible in semi-desert rural areas of Texas, New Mexico, and other parts of the West. Elmer Kelton, from the forewordDuring the Great Depression the windmillers of the Burdick & Burdick Company of El Paso, one of the largest windmill distributorships in the United States, crisscrossed the desert Southwest to bring wind power...

"An outstanding contribution to the historiography of the American West and likely will remain for a long time the definitive work on the Texas Panhandle." Ernest Wallace"As one born in the region, Rathjen is sympathetic to it, but he is also understanding of it; there is little Chamber of Commerce stuff in his story." Robert G. AthearnThe Texas Panhandle its eastern edge descending sharply from the plains into the canyons of Palo Duro, Tule, Quitaque, Casa Blanca, and Yellow House is as rich in history as it is in natural beauty. Long considered a crossroads of ancient civilizations, the...

A veritable Who s Who of pioneer cattlemen. Elmer Kelton, from the ForewordJohn and Mahlon Thatcher were two of the many pioneers looking to begin a new life in the great open spaces of the West. In the 1860s, the brothers began a small mercantile in the town of Pueblo, Colorado. From a safe in the corner of their new store, the brothers founded what was to become the First National Bank of Pueblo, Colorado and the beginnings of a financial empire that would encompass cattle companies from New Mexico to Canada.Together with such legendary figures as Frank Bloom, Henry Cresswell, O. H. Perry...

In the 1950s, West Texas suffered the longest drought in the memory of most men then living. By that time, Charlie Flagg, the central character of this novel, was one of a dying breed of men who wrested their living from the harsh land of West Texas. The struggle made them fiercely independent, a trait personified in Charlie s persistence throughout the seven dry years, his refusal to accept defeat, his opposition to federal aid programs and their inevitable bureaucratic regulations, his determination to stay on the land he loves and respects even as he suffers with that land. Charlie is by...

From a five-time winner of the Spur Award for Best Western Novel comes a masterful tale of a restless man who was everything the West once was--and will never be again. Now a dramatic motion picture from Turner Network Television, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, and Sam Shepard.

An important chapter in the history and folklore of the West is how women on the cattle frontier took their place as equal partners with men. The cowboy may be our most authentic folk hero, but the cowgirl is right on his heels. This Spur Award-winning book fills a void in the history of the cowgirl. While Susan B. Anthony and her hoop-skirted friends were declaring that females too were created equal, Sally Skull was already riding and roping and marking cattle with her Circle S brand on the frontier of Texas. Wearing rawhide bloomers and riding astride, she thought nothing of crossing the...

The Lone Star State has been described as the place where the Godly could battle the devil on his own ground. Circuit riders and other early preachers confronted dangerous outlaws, warring Indians, wild animals, and Texas unpredictable weather.