Mesquite-post tough Howie Forrest just thought he'd seen the elephant when he reached Independence, Missouri with two thousand head of ornery Mexican steers despite tornadoes, hail storms, cattle rustlers, and Jayhawkers.
If he'd been holding a squalling bunch of wild tomcats with their tails tied together in each hand, he couldn't have found himself in more trouble and despair than agreeing to trail boss an ox train of twenty-eight brides over six hundred miles to Palo Pinto, Texas--after he taught the women how to drive oxen.
He discovered soon enough that nothing compared to handling twenty-eight independent women, not even breaking up fights, fording swollen rivers, rescuing runaway boys from Kiowa Indians, tending rattlesnake bites, and fighting off Comancheros.
About the Author
Kent Conwell grew up in the Texas Panhandle in the town of Wheeler, population 848. His love of the West came naturally, for his grandfather ran away from his Tennessee home when he was 14 to bullwhack his way to the Panhandle. There he met his future wife, who had traveled from Illinois to Texas in a covered wagon.
After moving to Fort Worth, where he was more at home in the stockyards than at school, Kent earned a B.S. and began teaching. Later, he moved to Port Neches, where he acquired a M.Ed and a Ph.D. His love for writing about the West has never waned, because it was the one period unique to American history. He has won short story, screenplay, mystery, and western fiction awards.
A Wagon Train for Brides is Kent's nineteenth novel for AVALON.
