J L Crafts

Will Toal returns home to discover that his sons have been taken by a brutal desperado who wants revenge for the death of his brother. Will's foreman has been murdered, and his woman has already gone after the killer that has taken their boys. He heads out after them to set things straight. Just as things begin to look up for Will, he discovers that the woman he loves, the mother of his twin sons has been captured. Can he find her before she's murdered? Will realizes he is not alone. He'll do whatever it takes to protect his family, starting with killing Sam Brown. Hell is on the horizon. There will be a SILVER CITY RECKONING"...Crafts' skillful integration of real-life characters into his narrative is a marvelous accomplishment. He keeps readers anxious as Will goes it alone until he suddenly doesn't. Bursts of action and colorful characters make this outing a breathtaking ride through the Old West. One man's crusade to save his family provides pulse-pounding adventure." -Kirkus Review

Will Toal has seen a lot of the world in his twenty-three years, including war, the death of his family, and the loss of everything he owns. The gold his father left him, buried in the family graveyard, provides hope for a new future. He is determined to leave Georgia and the past behind him, and start fresh in Carson Valley, at the base of the mountainous Sierra Nevada bowl cradling Lake Tahoe.But here, Will comes up against a Goliath he never expected-Washington's support of San Francisco capital and influence to finish the transcontinental railroad as soon as possible. Big business is backed by national pride and unbelievable monetary gain, and this means driving the railroad construction through the upper reaches of Carson Valley-no matter whose land stands in their way.Untenable right-of-way issues lead to a fierce gun battle between the railroad's hired guns and the Carson Valley ranchers based on the real-life 1880 events of Mussel Slough, California, just outside the city of Hanford.Will and his fellow ranchers must try to survive the indomitable forces and insurmountable odds against them, fueled by more greed for power and money than they could ever have imagined. Can a compromise be reached in the completion of the grandest engineering effort the country has ever undertaken in its history, or will the ranchers and Will find themselves RAILROADED?