Winner of the 2009 Spur Award for Best First Novel by the Western Writers of America, as a “work whose inspirations, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West." December 1863. Daniel Stark, New York lawyer and radical abolitionist, has come to the gold fields of Alder Gulch, in what will become Montana, to get enough gold to make restitution to the clients whose assets his father gambled away before killing himself. But where ruffians rule and murder is tolerated, Dan realizes that he will likely not survive to take his gold home unless he joins with others, Union and Confederate sympathizers alike, who form a Vigilante group to establish law and order. With Dan as Vigilante prosecutor, they hunt down suspected members of a criminal conspiracy operating in the area. As the Vigilantes identify and try the conspirators in secret tribunals, Dan faces the horrible prospect of hanging both a friend and the husband of the woman he loves.
Award-winning author Carol Buchanan grew up listening to stories of hardship and courage from the people who settled her native state, Montana. Those stories, from Montana history and told by her parents about her pioneering forbears, inspired her to write stories of "courageous people who made tough decisions to build a life in the West."
Her first novel, God's Thunderbolt: the Vigilantes of Montana, won the 2009 Spur award for Best First Novel. In 2010 she followed it with the sequel, Gold Under Ice, which is a Finalist for the 2011 Spur for Best Long Novel. People praise the portrayal of life in Civil War Montana, and some have asked how she could research all the details.
Carol's answer: "I didn't have to research details of pioneering life. When I was a child, we spent a year living in a boxcar, so I know firsthand about getting water from a well, reading by kerosene lamp, and using an outhouse. Between the bees in the summer time and the snow in the winter, it was always a visit done quickly."
God's Thunderbolt asks the question, Where ruffians rule and murder is tolerated, can desperate measures establish the law?
Gold Under Ice continues the story of Dan Stark, Vigilante prosecutor in Montana, as he brings Montana gold home to New York City to rescue his family from poverty. Only, Dan does not have enough gold to pay the debt. To acquire more gold, he turns to trading gold options and futures in the Gold Room, a highly risky venture denounced by President Lincoln, who wishes all gold traders were "shot in the head."
Will Dan's risk succeed, or will he destroy himself and his family?
