The Checker Board: Book Two: Life's Endgame

by Nedler Palaz

Overview

By 1883, Dave Smith has matured into the cowboy life without fear of retribution from his father's criminal schemes, but the long reach of Jason de Forest sends bounty hunter outlaws after Dave resulting in a shootout that kills four men.
The last great overland cattle-drive of the Checker Board on the old Chisholm Trail into Kansas is confounded by misfortunes. Subsequent confrontations lead deeper into disaster, all maneuvered by an unseen vicious hand at land grabbing that results in a deadly attack. The combined forces of Checker Board hands, Mexicans, and Comanche Indians assault the Checker Board ranch to seize control from brutal squatters. The ensuing massacre brings reprisals against them and brands them renegades.
Sam Eagle Feather attempts to bring about a cease-fire between the law and the renegades succeeding only in a lone rescue in order to fight another day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781460206546
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	02/15/2013
Series:	Checker Board
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Nedler Palaz is a pen-name chosen by the author to reflect the historical western background of the West Texas Checker Board ranch. The author has a life time interest in the western genre including books of Zane Grey. Good character development, plenty of action and story plot is designed to bring back interest in Western lore and storytelling. This book is the second novel of the Checker Board saga. Subsequent books in the series relate to Dave Smith, broadening the scope into all the western territories in 1880. Further adventures ensue in which Dave Smith matures and copes with bounty hunters after a reward on his head.

Editorial Reviews

Palaz (The Checker Board: Book One, 2013) continues gunman Dave Smith's adventures in West Texas in a dark, violent Western involving not cowboys and Indians, but railroads and businessmen. At the end of the previous installment, Dave had found a home at the Checker Board Ranch, complete with a new father figure, Pinto Larson; Dave's friend Sam; and a love interest, Dolores. But his haven may not last now that unscrupulous businessmen have come to exploit opportunities in West Texas. Dave's tyrannical father is one of them, and he's interested in taking revenge on his wayward son. When Dave's father prevents the railroad from taking Larson's cattle to market, Larson and the other cattlemen organize an old-fashioned cattle drive. Later, Larson and Dave must contend with outlaw bounty hunters; a legal wrangle over the deed to the Checker Board land; and a land surveying company that takes over the Checker Board hacienda. In the first book, a fight or a conversation would usually quickly resolve a problem; but here, when even the law turns against the Checker Board ranchers, there are no easy solutions. Book One often downplayed tension, but this installment is breathlessly paced, with Dave Smith facing conflict after conflict. Palaz ratchets up the excitement by constantly putting characters in harm's way--and occasionally allowing them to be harmed. However, this second book still contains some of the first's quirky prose; for example, the narration occasionally switches between Dave's first-person point of view and an omniscient third-person perspective. Dave's observations still sometimes feel overdone, as when he describes tyrannical fathers who "continued a smug life, unmindful of all the dire disintegration of two children's lives." Although the violence never feels gratuitous, squeamish readers may have a hard time with the body count, which is more Sam Peckinpah than John Ford. A well-paced, if occasionally awkward, Western tale.

Kirkus Reviews