Synopsis
Ten Shoes Up" Angus is an 1880s cowboy riding and hiding on Ten Shoes Up, a 10,000 foot mountain straddling the border between New Mexico and Colorado. With a slack rein, he rides straight-legged, always on the lookout. Angus doesn't talk much except to Tucson, his bay gelding. Men admire the way he sits a saddle, and women wonder if he's going to dismount. As he rides into a new town, any fool can see he’s well-armed, confident, and riding a fine horse. He’s often taken for a scout or a trapper, or an outlaw. Some say his coming down off "his" mountain was reluctant. Others say it's about time. Town folk still mull their all too human problems, but Angus depends on the horse he rides, the trails he follows, and the rivers he crosses. His code—Hold true to nature, hide your misery, stay out of sight. In his early twenties, Angus is on a mission and struggles to resolve issues he thought were buried with his young wife. His life bears little likeness to today’s frenetic culture. Still, what happens to him parallels choices made by many young people today. While the West is no longer wild, today's culture owes much of its footing to men like Angus. Angus and Tucson are the same story—the onrush of civilization and its fated codes that clash with deeply held beliefs.
About the Author
Gary L Stuart I earned degrees in business and law at the University of Arizona, and practiced law in Phoenix Arizona for a long time. In the 1990s, I started writing long form, outside the office. Two text books later, I wanted more, which led to my first novel (“The Gallup 14”) in 2000. I grew up in Gallup New Mexico and always “hankered” to write a book about rural life in the southwest. My second novel, (“AIM For The Mayor—Echoes From Wounded Knee”), came along in 2008. Between those two novels, I wrote two large non-fiction books about famous legal cases (“Miranda—The Story of America’s Right to Remain Silent” and “Innocent Until Interrogated—The Story of the Buddhist Temple Massacre”). My latest non-fiction book (“Anatomy of A Confession—The Debra Milke Case”) will be released in late 2015. Once that trio of legal non-fiction books is up, I’m hoping to stick with fiction for the next decade. I teach creative writing to law students at Arizona State University. I write every day. My stack includes hundreds of short stories, articles, monologs, op-eds and blogs about writing and writers. I got back to my cowboy roots in the nineteen-eighties, which might explain why I’m now writing about life out west in the eighteen-eighties. Gallup, Tucson and Darlene are my horses; they’ve taught me a good deal about who I am over the last thirty years. Ten Shoes Up is the first of a three-book series set in the 1880s along the New Mexico Colorado border. My protagonist is an iconic 1880s cowboy. Mostly, he rides alone in the high country on the New Mexico- Colorado border looking for outlaws, in-laws, and trouble. It comes to him naturally. And often when he talks his horse into crossing a new river. These books can’t be booted down into the traditional western genre. They chronicle the challenges that young men and women faced at the turn of the 19th Century. From Angus’s point of view, as portrayed on my blog, not all that much has changed.
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