John D. Nesbitt

These are poems about Western life, ranging from pretty girls and heartbreak to campfires and good horses to life and death in the Western landscape. This is the second edition of a collection of award-winning Western poetry. The poems vary from free verse to sonnets, ballads, and songs. This edition includes the Spur-Award-winning poem "Prairie Center" as well as many other poems that have won awards in smaller contests. The first edition of this collection won a Will Rogers Medallion Award.

Out on a ranch in the foothills, Jim Lander is trying to get his life in order. He's trying to put his divorce behind him so he can develop a relationship with Dusty, a nice young woman who lives in town. Things get complicated, though, when he doesn't resist temptations at the Trail's End, his favorite honky-tonk bar. To sort things out, he goes to the mountains. But even then, it takes the right combination to get things into balance. Nothing comes easy, but it is possible to find a good camp, up and away from it all, where the best light comes from the moon and the campfire. This is John D. Nesbitt's second novel about life in the contemporary West. As in his other work, Nesbitt gives a realistic treatment to his materials. His characters are less than perfect, having been through divorce or similar mistakes and giving a hesitant try at romance. They live in a setting that Nesbitt writes about the best-small-town life, farm and ranch country, and the big outdoors where everyone has the right to look for a good camp. This is a lean, trim novel with a graceful prose style that will remind us of why we like to read.

Stories of a Golden WestSomewhere between John Steinbeck and Merle Haggard, these short stories are about people who work in the fields, sleep in cars and bunkhouses, and sort out the problems that life hands them. One character remembers the day Marilyn Monroe died; another runs off with an underage girl; and another finds a hidden rifle in a dead man's house. These people live in a world of young hopes and sad memories, pretty girls and hard work.

Antelope Sky: Stories of the Modern WestHere is a world of sky and sage, dust and rain, horses and saddles, pickups and gun racks-where the wild roses bloom in springtime and the wild geese fly in winter. This is a world where men and women meet, or separate, or have a drink somewhere in between, as they sort out their pasts and try to remake the present.

Travis Quinn doesn't have much luck picking friends. First, a friend gets him fired from a ranch. Then he heads down the Powder River, meeting another "friend" who puts in a good word and gets him hired at the Lockhart Ranch. And, if the rumors are true, this friend might just get Travis killed.

A Jimmy Clevis NovelThis is the third in a mini-series about Jimmy Clevis, the good-natured narrator who appeared earlier in Rancho Alegre and Red Wind Crossing. In this novel, Jimmy sets out to find a missing man. His travels take him to Wyoming, where he comes to the small town of Raven Springs and a couple of roadside inns. People seem to disappear in this place, and in the course of Jimmy's stay, he has to untangle the threads of missing persons, altered identity, greed, and murder.

A Jimmy Clevis NovelJimmy Clevis is out of work and needs some money. So when an old man named Tull asks him to do a quick job for him, Clevis agrees. All Clevis has to do is head south to Paloma Springs to find Tull's son. Sounds like easy money, right? Wrong. Clevis isn't just riding into Paloma Springs--he's riding straight into a tangled net of lies, stealing, blackmail, hidden identities . . . and murder.

TWO NOVELLASDead for the Last TimeIn "Dead for the Last Time," Larry Sterne is a free-spirited young fellow who comes back to his home town after his first year of college. He learns that an old pedophile has been found dead in an abandoned milk factory and some of his friends are suspected. Before long, one of the friends turns up dead as well. Set in the summer of 1967, this is a nice period piece as well as a genial murder mystery with a serious undertone. Trouble in the Labor CampIn "Trouble in the Labor Camp," Morgan Cross is a field worker who follows the crops. He wants to move up in the world, and he knows that he has to stay out of trouble in order to do it. He meets Rosa Maria, a pretty girl whose family is staying in the same labor camp, but things get complicated by murder and tawdry sex. These two novellas continue the retro/noir style in which John D. Nesbitt has earned distinction. His depiction of farm work, migrant housing, and small-town life in California in the 1960's is superb.