The Long Drift - Softcover

Brown, Sam

4

10 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061010030 ISBN 13: 9780061010033

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1996

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At a time when western towns exploded with settlers and the days of the open range and the great cattle drives were coming to a close, Casey Wills, a true cowboy, must decide whether to pursue a mysterious new career he calls the Long Drift. Reprint.

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From Publishers Weekly:

This sequel to The Big Lonely easily surpasses its predecessor in style and emotional sincerity. Narrator Casey Wills, only a youth in the first volume, is now a grizzled veteran who, like many others, spent his youth and energy looking at the south end of northbound cows and seeing the country from between the ears of a horse. He longs to buy himself a small spread and settle down. While a business deal to capture wild horses and sell them to waiting Boomers in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 doesn't proceed smoothly (and costs the life of a friend), it does give him the necessary capital. Unfortunately, he spends the money in a search for the missing husband of Miroux Sevier, with whom he has fallen in love. To make matters worse, he finds the man, and a sense of spousal duty keeps Miroux with her husband. One last cow drive turns disastrous, and one of the pokes involved sets out to track down and kill the man responsible. Casey once again gets sucked in and may end up losing his liberty?or his life. Brown drives the novel along like a Saturday-afternoon serial. Period detail, credible dialogue and an intimate knowledge of the life of a herder (monotony punctuated by frenzied activity and danger) enliven this well-told tale.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Casey Wills, protagonist of the Golden Spur^-nominated Big Lonely (1992), is still trying to settle down in the West of 1887. Along with saddle buddies Ab and Johnnie, Wills gets his opportunity to accumulate a stake when the trio is hired to gather the horse stock left behind when a ne'er-do-well Texas rancher commits suicide. It's a financial success but a personal tragedy when Ab dies during the roundup. Ab's lonesome death cements Casey's desire for a spread of his own, so he parts company with Johnnie and heads to Nebraska, where he begins his homestead. While in town, he sees, then meets Miroux Sevier, a mysterious French-Canadian beauty. They fall in love, but she's married. Her husband has been gone for seven months, and she has not heard from him, but until she learns her husband's fate, she won't marry Casey. He embarks on a journey to determine once and for all if he can end his long drift and settle down with Miroux. Once again poet and onetime cowboy Brown gets it right. The daily struggle of average folk--not gunslingers and bad men--against the backdrop of the frontier makes for compelling reading. Wes Lukowsky

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