Carlton Stowers

"It's been ten years since the worst day of Ben Dalton's life. After four grinding years of war, the Confederate veteran returned to his hometown of Aberdeen, Texas, to find that Mandy, the girl he loved, had run off with his best friend, John Rawlings. Dalton recovered from the loss and spent the next decade settling down to life as the town's marshal. That quiet life is shattered with the arrival of one stunning telegram. Mandy begs her old friend...

Thad Taylor is no one's idea of a fine man. Usually drunk and shiftless, he's disapproved of by most -- especially his father. But when his father doesn't return from a trip across the Kansas plains, Thad is the only one who can search for him. And he's far from ready for the ordeal.

"When twenty-five-year-old Lewis Taylor is released from the Texas State Prison, he receives little attention as he walks into the midday sunlight, free after serving five years for a crime he didn't commit. His only interest is in getting back to his hometown of Gila Bend, Texas, a quiet farming community about which he has only warm, idyllic memories. During his long years in prison, he survived by thinking fondly of the home he'd known since boyhood--and...