In 1875, nearly forty-years after the Mexican War, Mexicans and Texans are still spilling blood over ownership of the Nueces Strip-a hot, dry stretch of coastal prairie that bushwackers and horse thieves have turned into a lawless hell. Captain L.H. McNelly, a complex and determined Confederate veteran, is brought into the Nueces Strip for one purpose: to keep the peace. His measures are harsh and controversial-but McNelly wasn't sent in to be popular. In this boiler pot of killing and racial hatred, can any man bring lasting peace?
"Elmer Kelton is a Texas treasure, as important for his state as Willa Cather is for Nebraska and Badger Clark for South Dakota. Kelton truly deserve to be made one of the immortals of literature."
El Paso Herald-Post
"One of the best of a new breed of Western writers who have driven the genre into new territory."
