What Not To Skip For Adult Summer Reading

What Not To Skip...Westerns

If you are thinking about skipping the Westerns section on the "Race Into Reading" race track... please think again.

Listed below are some Western stories that explore the human drama and personal discoveries as vast and unpredictable as the western frontier in which they unfold.

A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher
A vivid and revelatory novel based on actual events of the 1847 Oregon migration,A Sudden Countryfollows two characters of remarkable complexity and strength in a journey of survival and redemption. James MacLaren, once a resourceful and ambitious Hudson’s Bay Company trader, has renounced his aspirations for a quiet family life in the Bitterroot wilderness. Yet his life is overturned in the winter of 1846, when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of smallpox. In the grip of a profound sorrow, MacLaren, whose home once spanned a continent, sets out to find his wife. But an act of secret vengeance changes his course, introducing him to a different wife and mother: Lucy Mitchell, journeying westward with her family. Lucy, a remarried widow, careful mother, and reluctant emigrant, is drawn at once to the self-possessed MacLaren. Convinced that he is the key to her family’s safe passage, she persuades her husband to employ him. As their hidden stories and obsessions unfold, and pasts and cultures collide, both Lucy and MacLaren must confront the people they have truly been, are, and may become. Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans,A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.
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A Gentle Giving by Dorothy Garlock
A New York Times extended list bestselling author, Dorothy Garlock has won acclaim and awards for her unique ability to convey both the romance and reality of frontier America. Here she presents one of her most beloved stories, a tale of two outcasts who must learn to take a leap of faith--and take a chance on love. She had narrowly escaped the lynch mob that unjustly hanged her foster father. Now lonely Willa Hammer has nothing left--except her dog Buddy, her faith in herself, and the protection of a strange, secretive family. She joins their wagon train, headed west . . . never realizing that she is traveling to the wilds of the Big Horn Mountains, where a run-down, intrigue-ridden ranch and the arms of an untamed, hardened cowboy await her. Haunted by his past, Smith Bowman has the power to infuriate Willa and hurt her. But a love greater than the Big Horn can be theirs if they can surrender to the gentle giving of their hearts.
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Autumn Lover by Elizabeth Lowell
Returning to her Wyoming ranch at the Civil War's end, Elyssa Sutton finds it picked bare by scavengers and coveted by determined men. Yet the proud young woman vows never again to abandon her Ruby Mountain home, though it means enlisting the aid of a dark and dangerous stranger who lives for revenge alone. Hunter Maxwell has suffered from the savagery of outlaws and the faithlessness of a woman. And he will trust no female - nor will he rest until the raiders who destroyed his family pay for their crimes. A woman in, need, a man in pain, in fury and fire they must now stand as one to fight for something cherished, something lost ... and for a passion neither dreamed could live. In the brisk chill of Autumn, ravaged hearts will be reborn.
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Sight of the Stars by Belva Plain
New York Times bestselling author Belva Plain beguiles us once again with a novel that explores the bonds that sustain families—and the lies that can shatter them forever. Sweeping through the pivotal events of twentieth-century America, The Sight of the Stars chronicles four generations of one remarkable family as they journey through years of love, loss, sacrifice, and unimaginable betrayal. Dressed in a brand-new suit, with one hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket, Adam Arnring says good-bye to his family and boards a train for the fabled West. The year is 1907. Adam is nineteen years old, a young man with stars in his eyes who has always dreamed of a future in the great open spaces of America. Now, far from his New Jersey home, he takes the first step toward attaining that dream, landing a job in a small department store in a booming Texas town. Here he meets a woman who excites him beyond all measure. The exquisite, untouchable Emma Rothirsch lives in a world whose doors are firmly closed to him. But Adam is a man willing to take great risks to get what he wants. One is Emma. The other is to build a lasting business enterprise that will live on through his children and grandchildren. But just when Adam’s dreams are within reach, fate intervenes. Tragedy strikes from the trenches of World War I, setting in motion a series of events that echo down through the years. The owner of a prospering department store and the head of a growing family, Adam succumbs to a moment of weakness that culminates in an unforgivable act of betrayal. And now, as another generation prepares to take its rightful place in the family’s legendary empire, the tenuous threads of the Arnrings’ past begin to unravel, revealing a shattering secret that reaches back nearly a century. Across a teeming canvas of history, through world wars and the close of a century, The Sight of the Stars tells a deeply affecting story of family and forgiveness, guilt and redemption. Brimming with the emotional depth and moral complexity we have come to expect from this incomparable storyteller, The Sight of the Stars is about what happens when we dare to dream, and the moments that can change families forever.
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