Hard Country
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A richly authentic epic adventure of rough-hewn men and courageous women, set in the hard country of the American Southwest frontier.
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 murderous outlaws and a place where he can start over. He drifts south until he meets a man who offers him work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory and forever changes his life.
Spanning the years of 1875 to 1918, Hard Country is the Western reinvented and enlarged into a saga that above all celebrates the people and the land of the great Southwest.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This sprawling western saga shakes trail dust through three generations of New Mexico ranchers carving out a place in the Tularosa Basin at the end of the frontier era. McGarrity, a former Santa Fe deputy sheriff and author of the long-running Kevin Kerney mystery series, gives his police chief protagonist a familiar family backstory, sending Civil War veteran John Kerney to the New Mexico territory to establish a ranch in an era when work was tough, cowboys were tougher, and daily life was an uncertain proposition. McGarrity knows and loves the harsh landscape, but his characters are sparely drawn, and the emotionally stunted, suspicious, and compulsively misanthropic Patrick Kerney makes for a difficult protagonist to carry the family saga element of this expansive novel. Insights are spelled out, rather than shown. "The forsaken, lost little boy who lived inside of Patrick made him who he was, but that didn't give him the right to bully her," and the frequent cowboy talk is laid on too thickly. But fans of McGarrity's modern police procedurals will appreciate his chronicle of a time and place that he obviously cares for.
