In the aftermath of Missouri's brutal Civil War, shattered bonds and loyalties hung heavy in the hearts of its people. Karl, hailing from a staunchly pro-Union German family orphaned by the conflict, faced harrowing decisions. His dearest friend, a Wilson, hailed from a pro-slavery family fiercely loyal to the Confederacy. It was a friendship tested by the fires of war, and Karl's journey was only beginning.
Armed with a six-gun and driven by circumstance, Karl first rode with Quantrill's Raiders before joining the ranks of the Texas Rangers. But life had more twists in store. As a bounty hunter, he relentlessly pursued the ruthless Ivory Thompson gang, tracking their bloody trail to a lawless mining town, Silverton, just north of Durango, Colorado. There, a shadowy outlaw named Red was gathering a crew of the most hardened criminals for a grand heist.
To collect the bounties and secure his retirement, Karl knew he had to be faster, smarter, and more ruthless than Ivory Thompson and his two henchmen. A new identity was his ticket to the big rewards, but fate intervened when he stumbled upon the lifeless body of Thorn T. Hagerman, a former Pinkerton Agent who had been chasing the same outlaws. Thorn's name was now his to wield.
As the newly christened Thorn T. Hagerman, our protagonist found camaraderie with a group of young lawmen and a charming waitress in a local hotel. But just when the rewards seemed within grasp, chaos erupted in Durango, threatening to unravel everything Thorn had fought for.
David Suttner was born in 1944 and raised in the small town of Poplar Bluff, in the foothills of Missouri's Ozark Mountains. He spent much of his early youth on his grandparent's farm, tending cattle, riding bareback, hoeing the garden, and picking cotton for cash to buy school-bought clothes and shoes. For fun, he attended church socials, pitching horseshoes, camping, canoeing, fishing, hunting, and listening to old timers tell tall tales from their past.
He received his first rifle for his eleventh birthday. It was a Winchester pump gallery rifle chambered for .22 shorts. It was for killing vipers, plinking, and bringing home small game. The gun is now in possession of his son, Bob, the third generation to shoot it.
At fourteen, he began working as a grease monkey for his father's construction company (draining swamps). He worked on the brush crew hacking its way to the big machines, whose big buckets dug canals, built levies and earthen dams, hauling in fuel and maintaining the drag-line and equipment.
He and his younger brother, Danny Mac, roamed the fields and swamps at the job site and drove the back roads and byways of Southeast Missouri looking for adventure in Dave's 1946 Ford Sedan (a retired candy apple red car that had belonged to the fire chief of Saint Louis. He purchased it for $55.00 from Erma's family junkyard).
His early life seems like an impossible dream in today's world, but it prepared him, his wife, and their son, for the rigors of living in inner-city Detroit, America's most dangerous city.
He earned his Bachelor degree in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, found time to explore the Indian Mounds near and around Missouri and Illinois. After moving to Michigan for graduate work his interest in the early western history and cowboy literature was stoked with horseback riding, country dancing and trips to the Southwest. When the time was right, he began writing first about life's survival adventures in Detroit.
He and his wife, Erma together for 62 years are still having fun. They live in a Victorian neighborhood in downtown Detroit and are witnessing a rebirth of their community. The dangers they have faced in the inner-city are similar to those faced by the early settlers on the Western frontier; economic uncertainty, corrupt politicians, criminal gangs, and a general disrespect for law.
