In this bittersweet visit to a simpler time in the American Southwest, Ralph Reynolds crafts a fictional story based on an old oral tradition that the Wild Bunch, an outlaw gang, invaded a New Mexico village near their hideout and shot up its Mormon church. Sparks fly when church bishop, Jim Nathan, a former lawman, confronts the gang and its leader, Butch Cassidy (a notorious fallen Mormon). Another of the outlaws, Clem, becomes smitten with the church beauty, named Deseret. He leaves the gang and joins storyteller, Scottie Abner, and Deseret in a dangerous attempt to halt a cattle drive that threatens the area. High adventure and suspense follows. There's a dramatic face-off between Bishop and Butch when the gang finds a need for Clem and comes back to get him.
Praise for other works by Ralph Reynolds
"I think
The Killvein White
is breathtaking. It has richness, tidy and neat discrimination about the different characters, and more suspense than even George Stewart could manage in his novels about weather disasters." --Glenn Leggett, author of
The Prentice-Hall Handbook for Writers
"In
Growing Up Cowboy
, Reynolds draws the wild beauty of his surroundings without getting trapped in clichés. Every loving description of the countryside shows his visceral attachment to the land of his birth." --
Davenport Times
, Iowa