2023 FINALIST, PEACEMAKER AWARD OF WESTERN FICTIONEERS2023 FINALIST, WILL ROGERS MEDALLION AWARD
It's 1917, and the Mexican Revolution has the Big Bend of Texas aflame. But the firestorm is no greater than the one inside newspaper reporter Jack Landon. Disillusioned, he flees down the road to nowhere and finds himself in Esperanza. Populated by people of Mexican heritage, the small village on the Texas bank of the Rio Grande is a target of Texas Rangers Company B, which unjustly considers it a bandit den.
Jack befriends a teenaged boy and his adult sister, Mary, who teaches in the Esperanza school. As Jack assimilates to life in Esperanza, the threat of Rangers looms large. Eventually a day of reckoning descends, and it envelops Jack and Mary and the entire village.
This novel is based on what actually happened at Porvenir, Texas, on January 28, 1918-the darkest moment in Texas Rangers history.