Honor at Daybreak - Softcover

Kelton, Elmer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553295470 ISBN 13: 9780553295474

Publisher: Domain, 1992

Synopsis

From one of the West's greatest living  storytellers, winner of numerous awards, including the Spur,  the Golden Saddleman, and the Western Heritage  Award, here is Elmer Kelton's magnificent new novel  of the wildcat West Texas oil boom of the 1920s.  It used to be that the worst crime in Caprock was  moonshining or lying about your Saturday night date  on Sunday morning--until someone struck oil. Now  the scent of the stuff has brought every dreamer,  drifter, and two-bit swindler to town. Among them  is the frontier mobster Big Boy Daugherty, who  warns any who'd stand in his way: Get Out or  Die. One man will do neither. Sheriff  Dave Buckalew is a man too proud to give up and  too stubborn to give in. He liked his town the way  it was--before the bootleggers, brothels, and  fortune-seeking roustabouts--and so did a lot of other  hardworking decent folk. Together they'll fight  to win back their town--and their future. This is  the story of their heroic stand.

About this title

About the Author

Elmer Kelton is the author of almost forty novels and has won awards from the Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Western Literature Association. His most recent work is Badger Boy. Kelton and his wife make their home in San Angelo, Texas.
Joyce Gibson Roach is an author, columnist, folklorist, and three-time winner of the Spur Award from Western Writers of America.

From Publishers Weekly

Most of the elements in this aw-shucks novel about a Texas oil town in the '20s are straight from central casting. Inhabiting Caprock, a place where people say, "If you aint's et, I'd be tickled to have your company," are, conveniently, the good guys: Slim McIntyre, the newly arrived, wide-eyed farm boy; Tracy Whitmore, the waitress Slim's courtin'; Dave Buckalew, the earnest sheriff who yearns for the pre-boom days; Choctaw, the brave but pithy Indian; Jolene, the straight-talkin', maternal madam; and Victor Underwood, the educated young speculator. Soon after Slim arrives, the bad guys--Big Boy Daugherty and his gangsters Turk, Irish, French and Sarge--start terrorizing the town. Despite Buckalew's efforts, no one will speak out against Daugherty, until Lydia, a prostitute, admits she saw a murder. Buckalew puts her in his witness protection program (his vacant ranch house), and falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Slim and Choctaw help the nearly bankrupt Underwood drill his last-chance well. The novel's conclusion is as subtle as an oncoming train. With 19 novels to his credit, Kelton obviously has found an audience. Here he makes no higher claim than to portray a boom town, but even for that standard, Honor at Daybreak has too much hokum, too few surprises.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Domain
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0553295470
• ISBN 13: 9780553295474
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432