Bøker av Patrick Dearen

2023 FINALIST, PEACEMAKER AWARD OF WESTERN FICTIONEERS2023 FINALIST, WILL ROGERS MEDALLION AWARDIt's 1917, and the Mexican Revolution has the Big Bend of Texas aflame. But the firestorm is no greater than the one inside newspaper reporter Jack Landon. Disillusioned, he flees down the road to nowhere and finds himself in Esperanza. Populated by people of Mexican heritage, the small village on the Texas bank of the Rio Grande is a target of Texas Rangers Company B, which unjustly considers it a bandit den.Jack befriends a teenaged boy and his adult sister, Mary, who teaches in the Esperanza school. As Jack assimilates to life in Esperanza, the threat of Rangers looms large. Eventually a day of reckoning descends, and it envelops Jack and Mary and the entire village.This novel is based on what actually happened at Porvenir, Texas, on January 28, 1918-the darkest moment in Texas Rangers history.

Spur Award-Winning Author Patrick DearenSTARFLIGHT TO ETERNITY(a.k.a. Starflight to Faroul)"I held the secret of creation in my hands, but I lost it and can never have it again!"Starflight to Eternity, a wizened old man named Kasterfayette has returned from deep space, bearing a strange tale of the planet Faroul. This legendary world is said to be a place where time began and ends, and where a man may gain the power to create. But Faroul is much more, for it holds the destiny of the universe.Alan Burke, a young officer assigned to a starship, deserts when superiors hurl missiles against his home planet. Turning to space piracy, he takes vengeance by preying on government ships. During an attack on a transport, Burke rescues Kasterfayette, a top-secret prisoner who whispers in his dying breaths the location of Faroul.Along with a vicious conspirator called Poteet, a prostitute named Davon, and a young man he loves as a son, Burke sets out on a perilous interstellar journey for Faroul and the deepest secrets of the cosmos.

Spur Award-Winning Author A story that could have come out of today's headlines, this revised edition of the acclaimed novel explores a Mexican national's desperate attempt to provide for his family. Ricardo has known only poverty in Mexico, but he dreams of a better life in the United States. He enlists a "coyote" to smuggle him across the Rio Grande, a river that separates not only one nation from another, but one world from another.The Illegal Man is also the story of Ann Rawlings, a recent widow struggling to preserve her West Texas ranch. There is a troubled Border Patrolman and her bigoted foreman, who considers Mexican ranch hands to be little more than animals. For Ricardo, it's a world in which he will suffer hardship and indignity, but one he will gladly endure to support his family.The Illegal Man grew out of a newspaper series by Patrick Dearen, who interviewed Mexican and American officials and accompanied Border Patrolmen along the Rio Grande. He based his character Ricardo on an actual Mexican national he interviewed on a West Texas ranch."A warm, gripping novel that explores a subject of intense interest to all Americans. Wonderfully told, this novel should endure." -Norman Zollinger, two-time Spur Award winner."A vivid description of what a common man goes through seeking work in a different country than his own. It is a powerful story filled with adventure, sadness, persecution, and loneliness." -San Angelo (Texas) Standard-Times."Dearen's writing is so perfect, so descriptive, so charged with emotion, it sucks the reader into the very marrow of the story. . . Stretches the mind and the heart as the good and the bad in life play out on its pages . . . It is a good story: a story of love, of justice, and of redemption." -Permian Historical Annual."A beautifully written story that speaks eloquently." -Roundup Magazine.

Eleven-year-old Fish Rawlings has always wanted to be a cowboy. Now, in the spring of 1868, he has his chance. His uncle is driving a cattle herd across Texas, and Fish is going with him as far as Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. Little does Fish know that he is saddling up for the wildest rides of his life.With his cousin Gid, Fish is about to face mean broncs, angry longhorns, and a dozen cowboys ready to play pranks. The days ahead will be filled with sandstorms and stampedes, lightning and twisters. It's the roughest stretch of cattle trail in Texas, and it will either make a cowhand out of a boy or break him.

The Big Bend of Texas is a mysterious place in 1869. Legend has it that there's a lost gold mine in the Chisos Mountains. Twelve-year-old Fish Rawlings and his cousin Gid have heard all about it. But when they discover a dying Indian in the desert, they have reason to believe it.Suddenly the boys find themselves with a great secret. No one else knows the way to the last Chisos mines-but do they dare? To find it, they must cross a desert prowled by Apache warriors. They must ride a trail haunted by devil animals and Indian spooks. Even with the help of a young Apache boy, the journey won't be easy.And what will they do if they succeed?

It''s 1867 and eleven-year-old Fish Rawlings and his cousin are headed across Texas on a wagon train. But the trail is full of danger. A Comanche war party is on the prowl, looking for horses and scalps. Among the Indians is eleven year old Hunting Bear, who is riding his first war trail. Before the journey is over, he must prove himself worthy to be a warrior.Fish has been taught to hate Comanches. Hunting Bear has been taught to hate white men. But all of that changes when the two boys come face to face and become friends.Suddenly the lives of their peoples rest on the boys'' shoulders. The Comanches have sworn to attack the wagon train. The white men have vowed to fight back and track down the warriors. Soon there will be bloodshed, and only Fish and Hunting Bear have a chance to stop it. But will they find a way?

This first book-length study of the entire Pecos traces the river's environmental history from the arrival of the first Europeans in the sixteenth century to today. Patrick Dearen, who has written about the Pecos since the 1980s, draws on more than 150 interviews and a wealth of primary sources to trace the river's evolution.

Author Patrick Dearen brings the reckless and risky adventures of real cowboys to life with colorful stories from interviews with 76 men who cowboyed in the West before 1932 as well as 150 archival interviews and written accounts from as early as the 1870s and well into the mid-twentieth century.

Fourteen-year-old Josh and his friend Shan are facing hard times on their families' farms in Central Texas in 1934. It's the days of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, and rain is as scarce as money. With the long dry spell have come wild animals with flashing teeth and deadly rabies. Dust storms known as black blizzards are raging, threatening lives and destroying cropland.Will a rainmaker bring rain? Will their families lose their homes? Will Josh's and Shan's friendship survive?From rabid animal attacks to a deadly flood to a barreling freight train, Josh is in for an adventure he will never forget.

The Big Bend of Texas is a mysterious place in 1869. Legend has it that there's a lost gold mine in the Chisos Mountains. Twelve-year-old Fish Rawlings and his cousin Gid have heard all about it. But when they discover a dying Indian in the desert, they have reason to believe it.Suddenly the boys find themselves with a great secret. No one else knows the way to the last Chisos mines-but do they dare? To find it, they must cross a desert prowled by Apache warriors. They must ride a trail haunted by devil animals and Indian spooks. Even with the help of a young Apache boy, the journey won't be easy.And what will they do if they succeed?