Uncompahgre: Where Water Turns Rock Red (Threads West, an American Saga Book 3) (Threads West An American Saga, Book Three, 3, Band 3) - Softcover

Rosenthal, Reid Lance

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0990700313 ISBN 13: 9780990700319

Verlag: ROCKIN SR PUB, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The Adventure and Romance of the America, her people, her spirit, and the West. We are all Americans. This is our story.

Uncompahgre-where water turns rock red is the third book of the #1 bestselling, Threads West, An American Saga epic saga, recipient of thirty-seven National/International Awards—Best Historical Fiction, Best Multi-Cultural, Best Romance and Best Western! Compared by reviewers, authors and readers alike to Lonesome Dove, Centennial, and the Sacketts of L'Amour. Called by some the ''Gone with the Wind of the West,'' and “the Sacketts on steroids.” Applauded by others as ''rings true and poignant, as authentic and moving as Dances with Wolves.''

In Uncompahgre, the time nears when the first of the next generation of Threads West characters will be born of the brave men and courageous women who have come so far and risked all. The men and women of the saga, having reached their initial destination, pre-Denver, Cherry Creek, are each faced with life-altering decisions. Some must decide to pursue or abandon torrid love affairs that have flowered on the dangerous journey from Europe and across America.

Their lives shaken by events they could not foresee and convergence with souls they could never imagine, they begin to build a nation that's essence is in transition. They have neither country nor culture in common, but their dreams and survival demand a tension filled tapestry of life threads stitched by fate and history.

The Oglala Sioux family struggles to cope with the inevitable change casting shadows upon their lands, culture and scared traditions. The elderly slave couple, and the renegade and his young, traumatized captive—the black-hearted captor unknowingly catapulted by his tortured past into possible redemption—are bound ever more tightly to the arc of the story, their tragedy and triumph-filed tales weaving into the fabric of a collective destiny. The Mormon family streams west in the Great Exodus escaping persecution and searching for Zion. Driven north by the Texas Rangers, an outlaw vaquero with royal, but bitter blood quests for a new sense of self and place.

The touchstones of the past are the guideposts to the future. Uncompahgre-where water turns rock red, is the continuation of this tale of America, her people and the West—new lineages join the many threads of uncommon cultures, differing origins and competing ambitions that entwine into the American spirit. Lives and generations are woven on the loom of history, propelled by fate and freedom to form the fabric that becomes the whole cloth of the nation. This is the tale of that uniquely American meld of the mosaic.

You will recognize the characters who live in these pages.
They are the ancestors of your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, and your family.
They are you. They are us. We are all Americans.
This is not only their story. It is our story.

In Book Four, Moccasin Tracks, just released in September of 2019, the fires of future deadly tumult between the states has begun to sweep west. The Threads West characters who have journeyed so far race against an early, foreboding winter to establish their homestead, some preoccupied with the serious complications of their pregnancies, others compelled to follow the call of a separate path, but all united to fend off ever-present danger. The ''resolution'' of the ''Indian Problem'' is evolving. It will leave families and hearts broken, forever staining the pages of American history.

?The decades of the Maps of Fate era (1854-1875) novels of Threads West epic saga become the crucible of the souls of generations, the building of the heart of the nation, the destiny of a people, and the relentless energy and beauty of the western landscape. This is the ongoing story of us.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Reid is fourth generation land and cattle, a rancher, and a multiple #1 bestselling author whose works have been honored with twenty national awards.  His cowboy heart and poet's pen capture the spirit of the western landscape and its influence on generations of its settlers. His long-standing devotion to wild and remote places and to the people--both past and present--who leave their legend and footprint upon America and the American West, is the inspiration and descriptive underpinning of all of his writing.
 
"If your mind and spirit are seduced by images of windswept ridge tops, flutters of aspen leaves caressed by a canyon breeze and the crimson tendrils of dying sun...if your fingers feel the silken pulse of a lover and your lips taste the deep kisses of building desire...if nostrils flare with the conjured scents of gunpowder and perfume, sage brush and pine, and your ears delight in the murmur of river current...if your heart pounds at the clash of good and evil and with each twist and turn of interwoven lives you feel a primal throb, then I have accomplished my mission."~Reid Lance Rosenthal
 
Passion fuels each thrilling, history, action and romance-packed novel in this widely acclaimed five-generation epic series of the historical and contemporary American west. Threads West has been compared to L'Amour, and Centennial, and some call the series, the "Gone With The Wind of the West."

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Uncompahgre: Where Water Turns Rock Red

Threads West An American Saga Book Three

By Reid Lance Rosenthal

Rockin' SR Publishing

Copyright © 2014 Writing Dream LLC
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-9907003-1-9

Contents

Introduction, 
Some Thoughts from the Author, 
Major Characters, 
CHAPTER ONE Loss of a Brother, 
CHAPTER TWO Girl Talk, 
CHAPTER THREE Gentle Surprise, 
CHAPTER FOUR Pull Back, 
CHAPTER FIVE A Word to the Wise, 
CHAPTER SIX Torrid Confusion, 
CHAPTER SEVEN I Don't Push, 
CHAPTER EIGHT Longhorns, 
CHAPTER NINE The Mule, 
CHAPTER TEN Alone, 
CHAPTER ELEVEN Red and Black, 
CHAPTER TWELVE Erik, 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Philippe Reyes, 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Now There Were Four, 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Headin' South, 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Renaissance of the Soul, 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Snake, 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Offerings, 
CHAPTER NINETEEN Epiphany, 
CHAPTER TWENTY The Outfit, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Attraction, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Primal Surprise, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Bremerhaven, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Narrows, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Jockeying for Position, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Proposal, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Senseless, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Lucky Encounter, 
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Premonition, 
CHAPTER THIRTY Storms on the Pass, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Buried Past, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Rift, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Under a High Country Sun, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Taking No Chances, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Disputed Trail, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Stitches of Rawhide, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Dream Dancer, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Little Medicine, 
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE The Noochew, 
CHAPTER FORTY The Barter, 
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE White Doeskin, 
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Traditions, 
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Uncompahgre, 

CHAPTER 1

May 27, 1855

LOSS OF A BROTHER

* * *

"Don't like this at all. Nope, not looking forward to it. Not one bit, Buck."

The mustang's ears pricked at the sound of Zebbariah Taylor's raspy voice. The tobiano gelding snorted agreement. The mountain man, holding his reins in one hand and a lead rope in the other, twisted in the saddle and glanced behind him at Red, the wagon master's spirited sorrel mare.

The eastern front of the Rockies rose jagged in the early afternoon sun. Zeb slouched forward again and sighed, his eyes roving the horizon. Buck swiveled slightly back toward him, his sunlit head standing out in sharp contrast to the spring green of the grassy, rock-strewn slope. Patches of bitter brush and sage punctuated the soft plateaus as they descended toward the South Platte Valley. Miles out, the blemish of a small settlement was visible, flanked by clusters of distant tipis.

"What am I going to tell Mac's brother, Buck?"

Buck whinnied and shook his head slightly. Leaning forward, Zeb patted the gelding's neck. Behind him, Red answered the mustang's empathetic call.

Zeb nodded back at the mare. "Yep, I miss Mac too." He sighed again and straightened his tall, thin, buckskin-clad frame in the saddle but he couldn't quite free his shoulders of their droop. One hand absently stroked his mustache where the tip hung between his lips and the dark grey tinged stubble of his jaw.

The well-muscled horses picked their way steadily toward the Cherry Creek settlement. Lulled by the sway of the mustang, Zeb's mind drifted between scattered images of time spent with Mac over the years.

Their meetings were few, Zeb's trapping cabins being hundreds of miles southwest in the mountains, far from the tiny but growing settlement of Cherry Creek. The mercantile was the primary buyer of Zeb's furs and he and Mac soon became close friends.

Mac and his brother Randy had been fresh from Ireland in the early 1840s, searching for adventure, opportunity and a place where being Catholic didn't matter. They began as traders and teamsters. Then ten years back, they started the ramshackle Gart's Trading Company and Mercantile. Randy handled the store and local trade with Indians and whites. Mac guided wagon trains of settlers west, building a reputation as a jovial but no-nonsense, quick-tempered wagon master. On his return trips to St. Louis to organize the next band of westward pioneers, his wagons were always loaded with leather, pelts and occasionally, salted buffalo meat, all of which were in ever-increasing demand as St. Louis expanded eight-fold to one hundred thousand people in the late 1840s and 1850s.

A yellow jacket hovered around Zeb's face and he slapped at it with an absent wave of his long, callused fingers. The insect's annoying drone broke his reminiscence and dredged up the shock and anger he felt when, two weeks before, he had discovered Mac's short, extremely powerful, broad-shouldered form crumpled, one leg bent haphazardly under the other, his bloody hand still clutched around the shaft of an arrow protruding from his wool shirt. The coagulated dull red-brown of blood and death contrasted oddly with his bright red hair and long beard.

Zeb shook his head slowly. Bad enough if it would've been Pawnee ... but by the hand of that sneaky bastard, Jacob. He paused and looked up at the sky. "You didn't deserve that Mac, my friend; you surely didn't." Behind him, Red whinnied again and Buck shook his head, the leather of the hackamore squeaking slightly in the spring heat of the afternoon.

"Buck, I suppose we'll tell Randy straight out. No other way to do it."

With an effort, Zeb tried to turn his thoughts in a different direction, toward Sarah and her bright blue eyes. His mind's eye drank in the petite, shallow curves of her trembling slender figure, the freckles across the bridge of her nose and her lips — not too full — perfectly shaped. His memory drifted to the creamy smooth of her skin and her small well-formed breasts, exposed when, at her frantic, almost hysterical insistence and in spite of his embarrassment, he had cut the bloodstained chemise away from her skin. That had been just a few weeks ago, on Two Otters Creek.

Zeb felt the heat rise in his cheeks and knew it wasn't the sun. He half grinned to himself. The soft curls of her red hair had faded to burnished auburn and had grown longer over more than two months on the trail. The prairie schooners had ventured a thousand miles from St. Louis, triumphantly, yet tragically. They had arrived just hours before and the wagons were circled behind him now on the high ground, five miles northeast of Cherry Creek.

"She seemed to like them high-top moccasins I made for her, don't ya think, Buck?" The mustang rolled his eyes and Zeb laughed. "Jealous are ya?" Zeb's mind wandered back to the first time he had seen her, small, huddled and defensive, her face white and pinched, sitting as far as she could from the stocky towheaded man on the wagon seat as he drove their team onto the barge on the east side of the Mississippi. Zeb's mules had also sensed the dark energy between the two as Sarah's wagon had passed them, nervously shifting their weight from left to right.

The scene unfolded in his mind vividly: the upstream breeze rustling, the sparkles of the Mississippi current in sun-reflected bursts, the lap of the water against the thick planks of the barge's hull as it made sluggish progress toward the west bank, the murmur of current, the hollering of men, bleats of oxen and nickers of horses floating in the light wind. Then there was the altercation, shouts, the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ROCKIN SR PUB
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0990700313
• ISBN 13: 9780990700319
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar