Our American West - Paperback

by Gary McCarthy (Author)

Our American West, Volume 3 is filled with western frontier stories you are sure to find entertaining. "The Roadrunner - Our Sagebrush Clowns" reflects on the speedy and often comical bird of our southwestern deserts. Wild and wicked "Calamity Jane" lived up to her reputation as the West's most infamous outlaw woman. If she'd have gone before "'Hanging' Judge Parker", Calamity would almost assuredly have been the sixty-first person to meet "The Prince of the Hangmen" a gentle fellow who never understood why people would not smile when they met his gaze. This volume describes one of the most memorable events in the history of the American West: "The Donner Party - Frozen Horror" and describes the horror that led to cannibalism. The fabulous "49'er Gold Rush" ruined the lives of two ambitious and well-intentioned men, "John Augustus Sutter" and "John Marshal" and just a few years later, the largest strike ever to occur in America - "The Big Bonanza" took place deep under Nevada's mighty Sun Mountain. Out on the untamed Texas frontier, a terrified twelve-year-old girl, "Cynthia Ann Parker", watched Comanche slaughter her family and was taken captive; over the years she become so loyal to those people that she never wanted to return to the white culture, even preferring death. The debate will always rage over who was the most deadly gunman on the western frontier, but "John Wesley Hardin" makes a good case for that infamous distinction - it's almost a shame that he never had to face the likes of the deadly shootist "Wild Bill Hickok" in a stand-up gunfight. "Geronimo" was a great Apache chief who sought vengeance and not without good reason while the "People of the Shining Mountains" wanted only peace and to remain in their beautiful forest hunting grounds. Once upon a time in the West, someone came up with the hare-brained idea of importing a strange-looking and not especially friendly animal to cross the vast southwestern deserts; in "Camels - A Really Bad Experiment" you'll likely shake your head and then laugh out loud. From start to finish, expect to be entertained and enlightened by this fine collection of stories written by a national award-winning author and master storyteller who clearly loves the myths and legends of OUR AMERICAN WEST.

Author Biography

Gary McCarthy has sold over three million books during his distinguished writing career. He has traveled the West researching his many acclaimed novels and loves to skillfully interweave historical fact with fiction, always telling his readers what is real and what is not. McCarthy is the author of fifteen American historical and thirty-four western novels and is constantly on the lookout for new stories to tell. He has been a college teacher of creative writing and lives in Northern Arizona's rugged high mountain and canyon country near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. He still finds the time to hike and ride his buckskin Quarter Horse.