TAMZEN

The Greer family knows little of what to expect as they leave their small but comfortable cotton farm to move to Block 97, a land of rocks and dust storms and disputable land claims in western Texas. When Tamzen's sister Lutie is accidentally shot in the war between the farmers and the cow. boys, Tamzen finds herself forced to choose between Turk Bascom, the passionate rancher who's been spearheading the war against the homesteaders, and the mild-mannered Arthur, a former employee of Bascom who refuses to take sides, and who loved both her and Lutie. The author's slow-moving but powerful style echoes the rhythms of the land as the settlers and ranchers endure, give up, or go on, for the novel is as much about the quiet courage that tells a man when to keep on or stop moving as it is about the nature of love that makes that feeling right.