"Clairborne embraced his mother, then his sister. He took off his broad-brimmed grey hat, swept it downward in his best cavalier salute, turned and rode off, not once looking back."

There's no turning back in Randolph Carter Harrison's riveting debut novel, "West from Yesterday," where one man's flight from the past may cost him everything.

Tucker Clairborne's world is shattered by the Civil War and its horrific aftermath when his father and brother are killed. Expected to take over the family's Virginia plantation, he abandons expectations and rides west toward the unknown.

This...