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BADGER BOY by Elmer Kelton

BADGER BOY

by Elmer Kelton

Pub Date: Jan. 1st, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-87319-0
Publisher: Forge

Kelton, called “The Greatest Western Writer of All Time” by the Western Writers of America, returns to the Texas frontier he limned so brilliantly in telling of redheaded David “Rusty” Shannon and the founding of the Texas Rangers in The Buckskin Line (1999). That began in 1840 and moved up to the Civil War. With the war ended, mean-spirited Union soldiers are taking over the territory, as are angry Confederate returnees and army renegades, while the Rangers whom Rusty joined earlier to save settlers from the Comanches (who killed his original family and later his foster father and who once held him captive) are disbanding. Now he’s faced with a deeply ironic dilemma: a white lad called Badger Boy, whose parents were also murdered by Comanches and who was himself captured and raised by a Comanche warrior, falls prisoner to Rusty.

Drama bright as daylight that leaves your tongue dry as powder.