Welcome

The Soul Rustler is the first of three novels in "the Tinhorn" series, featuring a young midwestern lawman who, after the tragic loss of an associate during the hunt for Jesse amd Frank James, turns to a career as a traveling western photographer. He then applies his trade in the worst towns in the frontier of America, and while helping Pinkerton detectives to solve crimes on the side, in the process rediscovers that part of him which once fit well into law enforcement- thus reestablishing his courage and his desire to fight criminals and injustice. But there are strong emotions which restrain him from officially doing so, which he must resolve in the process.

In the meantime, there are powerful forces of evil entrenched across the land, and chaos reigns. Satan the "Soul Rustler" has agents everywhere spreading violence, lies and delusions which ensnare the unsuspecting. In the end, the young lawman finds his niche and his backbone, but learns the truth in Shakespeare's often alluded to witticism, which came from his character Sir John Falstaff, often quoted and misquoted saying; "The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life."

The historical events in all three novels are presented faithfully, and in proper sequence, with very little modification, providing an educational journey through the American West, revealing in many ways what a small place it was.

BUT PLEASE TAKE NOTE. This is the real west, and if this story was a film, I would rate it PG/R. There is awful language, senseless carnage, sex trade, and plenty of racial hatred and anti-social behavior. For better or worse, most of the characters in these novels were real people, and the incidents actually happened. The main characters have been invented to serve as guides to take you on epic sweeps through the wild frontier, where you will meet many famous individuals, good and bad, in their actual lives, in the middle of their crimes, or in the process of ending other's, devoid of glamorization or the infinite popular myths which they inspired.

IN SPITE OF MY "ADULT" RATING, interspersed among the unfolding true-to-life crime stories are many of my favorite cultural witticisms and allusions to the Bible. The Victorians were all greatly impacted by literary quotations and the Holy Scriptures. The Bible was the most read book of the time, and the source of common knowledge about Ancient History, Law, and morality. These novels seek to show how that generation as a whole may have had more "Bible knowledge" than any in history, and how that shaped their dialogue, and yet how it failed to alleviate pervasive depravity or outlaws and their crimes which were the vanguard of "Manifest Destiny."

Westerns in our culture often present a very one-sided, dark, godless world, when even in the worst places there were actually good, honorable, intelligent people working for "Kingdom Causes" and Social Justice. Have no doubt that I pray that this story honors them and their struggles, as it shows solutions and strategies for our own.

The illustrations are mine. I have collected a huge library of antique tintypes, many of which feature characters from the Old West, or their "doppelgangers." As an artist, I have been able to digitally restore and modify them to make them reliable likenesses of many familiar faces from history.