Hard Country (2012)  

• Chapter 1 • Reviews • Positive reactions from other authors • Cover for Audio edition • Follow the trail - see map • Selected bibliography

Michael McGarrity has crafted a richly authentic epic adventure of rough-hewn men and courageous women set in the hard country of the frontier American Southwest. 

A tale of love and loss, survival and sacrifice, lawlessness and virtue, Hard Country is a rare and extraordinary story of one family's struggle to settle and endure in the vast, untamed territory of New Mexico. In the wake of the death of his wife as she gives birth to his son, and the killing of his brother on the West Texas Plains, John Kerney is forced to give up his ranch, leave his son behind, and strike out in search of the murdering outlaws and a place where he can start over. He drifts south, hiring on as a hand until he meets a man who offers him work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory that forever changes his life. Spanning the years 1875 to 1918, Hard Country is as much about the expansion of a nation as it is about the search for love, lost family, and new beginnings in the harsh, sun-scorched, sand-blasted beauty of gypsum white sands, black lava badlands, and towering mountain ranges. It is an epic that infuses the tradition of the great Western novel with historically accurate settings and intelligently drawn characters. Packed with an honest portrayal of the people and events that set into motion range wars, Indian raids, cattle rustling, rough justice, long- standing feuds, murder, and the final closing of the frontier, Hard Country resonates with a hard-bitten, atmospheric reality. It is the Western reinvented and enlarged into an historic family saga that above all celebrates the people and the land of the great Southwest.

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