"A mighty fine, meandering Western" ~ Kirkus Reviews
Patrick Smithwick, Author of Flying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing and Racing My Father: Growing Up with a Riding Legend:
"Reading The Mule Tamer reminded me of the same adrenalin-pumping experience I had when watching the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove. Every night after dinner, I looked forward to the next episode of Larry McMurtry's novel, and every night I did not want it to end. Indeed, I can see The Mule Tamer's Arvel Walsh being played by Robert Duvall and Dick Welles being played by Tommy Lee Jones. On the other hand, many of the sharply, crisply written scenes - whether of shoot-outs, killings, drug-induced deliriums, or lust - brought back memories from Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy which began with All the Pretty Horses.
Being a painstakingly researched novel, some of its most graphically etched scenes taken right out of the pages of 1890's newspapers, The Mule Tamer will interest readers of historical novels as well as of American history. Also, all of us who love classic Western movies will be drawn to the challenges facing Walsh and Welles. Yet, author John Horst has set his sights higher than the creating of a stereotypical and rehashed Western plot. Walsh not only embodies the classic traits of a Western hero - he's stoic, laconic, an excellent marksman, has a mysterious and tragic past, and is desirable by a young, sexy, fast-shooting, hard-riding, free-spirited woman - Walsh is also introspective, a character who changes and develops as he searches for answers to the questions in his life.
In a tight situation, Chica - a wonderfully drawn female gunslinger based on a true figure of the West - does not think twice before pulling the trigger, and you shouldn't either: click instantly on the link to The Mule Tamer and buy this book."
Arvel Walsh can tame mules, but can he tame the wild Arizona frontier, and the Mexican girl known as Chica, as wild and unpredictable as the land she roams? Arizona in 1892 is the last of the untamed country in America. Laws are hard to enforce and bad hombres know it. Texas pushed them out of their land with the famous Texas Rangers, can Arizona do the same? Challenged by savage bandits, psychotic serial killers, and anarchists, Arvel Walsh and Dick Welles will have to summon all their knowledge, and all their guts as veterans of the Civil War to make the fledgling Arizona Rangers a force to be reckoned with. Follow the men as they ride across the deserts and through the arroyos of southern Arizona, encountering dangers, a mystical aborigine, a severed head in a bottle, and side show freaks while discovering that heroes may be found in the most unlikely places, and that a certain beautiful and unpredictable woman may very well be the key to their success and their salvation, in more ways than one.
Genre: Western
Patrick Smithwick, Author of Flying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing and Racing My Father: Growing Up with a Riding Legend:
"Reading The Mule Tamer reminded me of the same adrenalin-pumping experience I had when watching the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove. Every night after dinner, I looked forward to the next episode of Larry McMurtry's novel, and every night I did not want it to end. Indeed, I can see The Mule Tamer's Arvel Walsh being played by Robert Duvall and Dick Welles being played by Tommy Lee Jones. On the other hand, many of the sharply, crisply written scenes - whether of shoot-outs, killings, drug-induced deliriums, or lust - brought back memories from Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy which began with All the Pretty Horses.
Being a painstakingly researched novel, some of its most graphically etched scenes taken right out of the pages of 1890's newspapers, The Mule Tamer will interest readers of historical novels as well as of American history. Also, all of us who love classic Western movies will be drawn to the challenges facing Walsh and Welles. Yet, author John Horst has set his sights higher than the creating of a stereotypical and rehashed Western plot. Walsh not only embodies the classic traits of a Western hero - he's stoic, laconic, an excellent marksman, has a mysterious and tragic past, and is desirable by a young, sexy, fast-shooting, hard-riding, free-spirited woman - Walsh is also introspective, a character who changes and develops as he searches for answers to the questions in his life.
In a tight situation, Chica - a wonderfully drawn female gunslinger based on a true figure of the West - does not think twice before pulling the trigger, and you shouldn't either: click instantly on the link to The Mule Tamer and buy this book."
Arvel Walsh can tame mules, but can he tame the wild Arizona frontier, and the Mexican girl known as Chica, as wild and unpredictable as the land she roams? Arizona in 1892 is the last of the untamed country in America. Laws are hard to enforce and bad hombres know it. Texas pushed them out of their land with the famous Texas Rangers, can Arizona do the same? Challenged by savage bandits, psychotic serial killers, and anarchists, Arvel Walsh and Dick Welles will have to summon all their knowledge, and all their guts as veterans of the Civil War to make the fledgling Arizona Rangers a force to be reckoned with. Follow the men as they ride across the deserts and through the arroyos of southern Arizona, encountering dangers, a mystical aborigine, a severed head in a bottle, and side show freaks while discovering that heroes may be found in the most unlikely places, and that a certain beautiful and unpredictable woman may very well be the key to their success and their salvation, in more ways than one.
Genre: Western
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