HE LEFT BEHIND A WOMAN AND A HOME ... STOOD BEFORE AN UNTAMED LAND ... AND CARRIED THE COURAGE OF A HERO.
When Ethan Payne and his best friend, Gil Stark, left their hometown for the California Gold Rush, the recklessness of youth and the bravery of dreams dueled them. But somewhere on a journey that took them down the Missouri, across the Gulf of Mexico, and through the jungles of panama, the two young men began to change. Ethan learned he had the heart of a fighter. Gil learned he had the heart of an outlaw. By the time they reached California, both had left their innocence and friendship behind -- but they were destined to come face to face again.
In this new saga of an authentic frontier adventurer, acclaimed Western writer Jason Manning vividly captures the life and times of a young man coming of age in a harsh world of unlimited possibility and swift, savage death. For Ethan Payne, the untamed West gave him a place to make a stand -- with a gun, a fierce heart, and a dream that wouldn't die...
2002 by Jason Manning St. Martins Press (New York) 249 pp ISBN: 0-312-98202-X
I was happy for the chance to write a trilogy about a western character who was not a mountain man, and the Ethan Payne trilogy -- Frontier Road, Trail Town and Last Chance -- which covers the period from the California Gold Rush to Bill Cody's Wild West Show turned out to be 700 pages of some of my best writing, I thought.