In the horse latitudes of the Gulf of Mexico, that zone where long periods of high pressure keep the winds away, becalmed sailors sometimes tossed the horses overboard to conserve water. In these unapologetically traditional and realistic stories, characters find themselves in circumstances which demand similar difficult and undesirable acts. Because the stories are set in the Southwest and Mexico, from about 1920 through 1990, they often hinge on the suspicions, antagonism and ignorance the region's different cultures, races and classes bear against each other. C. W. Smith is an accomplished...

On the night of the vernal equinox in 1930, the novel's protagonist, Wilbur Smythe, puts in motion his plan to avenge the deaths of his wife and his employer, a wealthy Kiowa, both murdered by a banker greedy for the Kiowa's oil money. Smythe intends to kidnap the banker's seventeen-year-old daughter, Sissy, and hold her hostage to torment her father before killing him. Hunter's Trap further explores the clash of values and cultures that formed the core of Smith's earlier novel based on historical events, Buffalo Nickel. In this new novel, he has written a blend of early twentieth-century...

It's 1956, and James Robert (Jimbo) Proctor has just turned sixteen when his Uncle Waylan and his new wife Vicky invite Jimbo to spend a summer toiling in the New Mexico oil patch. Jimbo dreams that heaving heavy metal about will serve as well as a Charles Atlas course to make a man of him, but he lands smack dab in a domestic fracas that has his uncle living in his machine shop and sneaking out with Sharon, his secretary.
Meanwhile Jimbo's Aunt Vicky leads a protest against a fundamentalist book ban and rails against American H-bomb tests on Bikini. James sets out to solve the case of...

Set during the turmoil of World War II, "Purple Hearts" is the story of the epileptic scion of an East Texas timber and oil fortune and his marriage to a stunning stranger desperate for sanctuary. Though naive and virginal, thirty-year-old Georgie Karacek wins Sylvia through his charm and kindness. Longing to prove himself, he then hides his illness to join the army. Sylvia's relationship with Georgie's overprotective mother proves difficult, so to make ends meet she takes on a boarder, Robert, in Georgie's absence. Soon Robert and Sylvia grow close, and he presses her to run away with him....

Nineteen-year-old Jason is lost. The rush of graduation parties has subsided, the ubiquitous discussion of college departures dimmed to a dull roar. His former classmates have made elaborate plans, but the only date on Jason's calendar is a court appearance next Monday. Jason, who dropped out of high school just two months shy of graduation, finds himself stuck in the well-worn grooves of his hometown. But when his over-achieving girlfriend Lisa departs for UT Austin to study medicine, Jason finds Mesquite a place he can hardly recognize. Jason's family can offer him little direction. After...