This is a story of the early days when... An intense, red-haired young man named Rusty Shannon rides into Fort Belknap on the Brazos River and joins the Texas Rangers. Years before, Mike Shannon rescued Rusty from a Comanche war party and became his adoptive father. Not long ago, Mike Shannon, was bushwhacked and killed, and his death still haunts Rusty. Rusty thinks he knows the identity of Mike's killers. But with Texas now in the throes of seceding...

Sam Houston's victory at San Jacinto has made Texas an independent republic. Along with other settlers whose lives have been disrupted by the revolution, Joshua Buckalew tries to put the pieces back together. He finds that starting over in the aftermath of war can be as challenging as war itself. The racial differences that helped foment the conflict have not disappeared -- and being an independent republic can be more difficult than being a colony...

For Gage Jameson, the summer of 1873 has been a poor hunt. A year ago, he felled sixty-two buffalo in one stand, but now the great Arkansas River herd is gone, like the Republican herd before it. In Dodge City, old hide hunters speak is awe of a last great heard to the south-but no hunter who values his scalp dares ride south of the Cimarron and into Comanche territory. None but Gage Jameson...

In 1816, Mordecai Lewis, a veteran of Andrew Jackson's Indian campaigns and battles against the British, moves his family into the western Tennessee canebrakes. But Mordecai, a born wanderer, is not satisfied with farming, and with his sons Michael and Andrew and some other backwoodsmen, he leads a foray into Spanish-held Texas to hunt wild horses and return the mustang herd to sell in Tennessee. Crossing the Sabine River, Mordecai's party encounters...

When Texan-born Josh Buckalew met Teresa, a young and beautiful Mexican woman, it was love at first sight. But with the Alamo recently sieged and destroyed, Josh knew this rosebud love would be unobtainable on account of the war thorns harrowing the country. So the Buckalew brothers, Josh and Thomas, along with Josh's friend Muley, the man-child, come together with other Texans to protect their land at Goliad against the Mexicans who have just ravished...

In Texas Sunrise, Elmer Kelton brings together two novels that tell the story of the Texas Revolution as seen by the brothers Thomas and Joshua Buckalew who emigrate to Texas at a time when the Mexican-controlled province welcomes settlers. In Massacre at Goliad, tensions mount between Mexican authorities and American newcomers, and revolution is in the air, something Thomas Buckalew welcomes but Joshua fears, he is in love with a Mexican girl. The...