Haunted Border

2022 Elmer Kelton Award Winner


Spur Award-Winning Author

Patrick Dearen


"Fast-paced, gripping, and exciting . . .

An unusual but interesting concept for a western story."—Historical Novel Society.


In 1870, Jake Graves faced a choice: allow Comanches to carry off his sister, or shoot her. Unwilling to fire, he has been tortured for decades by the brutal end that he could have spared her. The incident bred in him a hatred for Indians that persists to this day in 1917 on the Cross C Ranch on the Texas-Mexico border. Now Jake learns that his daughter Dru wants to marry Apache foreman Nub DeJarnett.


Even before Jake can process the news, Mexican bandits kidnap Dru and her cousin Ruthie. The bandit leader, Rentería, considers himself a tlahuelpuchi, a shape-shifting agent of evil, and he needs the women’s blood to survive. Whether man or monster, Rentería is a killer.


Through a stretch of Chihuahuan Desert teeming with mystery, Jake and Nub take up the chase on horseback, for Rentería believes that Dru is his reincarnated sister and plans to slay her on the Rio Grande where his sister became his first kill.


Haunted Border is based on a taped account by a survivor of the true-life Brite Ranch Raid of 1917.