Tales of the Embers: Stories from the American Frontier
Gather close to the flickering campfire as the wind whispers through the pines and the night presses in. This collection of lean, unflinching short stories revives the raw voices of the old American frontier-trappers who speak in the clipped cadence of the high Rockies, trail-worn soldiers nursing coffee thick as mud, half-frozen homesteaders, wary scouts, and riverboat gamblers whose luck ran out before the cards did.
Here are tales of sudden blizzards that swallow whole wagon trains, of ghostly riders on the llano, of desperate stands against raiders beneath a prairie moon, and of quiet betrayals traded in the yellow glow of a single lantern. Each story carries the scent of woodsmoke, the bite of black powder, and the weight of choices made when law was a rumor and tomorrow was never promised.
Short enough to read while the coffee boils, sharp enough to stay with you long after the fire burns down to coals, Tales of the Embers is frontier storytelling at its truest-told low, told plain, and told like a man who has seen too much to waste words.