Kit cope rides the high country

Howdy Pard,

If you haven’t happened by my introduction, allow me to re-introduce myself here; my name is Alan Eltron Barrell, and I am the author of the new western fan novel Kit Cope Rides the High Country

http://www.kitcoperidesthehighcountry.com/

Kit Cope Rides the High Country is a subtle parody-satire of the entire western genre itself. It is the story of a young buffalo-skinner who grows up in Dodge City, Kansas, during the buffalo boom, having been born to a wayward sporting woman and fathered by some cowboy who rode in off the range after collecting his wages, sired Kit during a wild night of costly extravagance, and then rode back on out empty-pocketed once more…
Kit himself grows up to become sorely aware of this.
While this is merely the fundamental underpinning of the central character, young Kit, the main focus of the tale is the abduction of a mother and two daughters by a ruthless Comanche renegade by the name of God Dog, and the harrowing manhunt which then ensues, among which young Kit is to be found by fate or perhaps providence. The novel has been called, ‘Funny, entertaining, shocking and thrilling, yet also thoughtful and intelligent’, the dialogue has been noted as being, ‘marvellously authentic’, and the characters, ‘lovingly crafted and humorously eccentric’

I will post the synopsis below in case this story appeals to your western nature. It has garnered much praise and there is a book review on the website as well an an author interview and even a link to this very forum under the western recommendations page, as it is the finest western forum I was able to come across.

I wrote this novel with passion and respect for true western fans; something to celebrate the west and yet at the same time to breathe new life into it through the angle of satire and parody, yet at the same time brutal seriousness and authenticity. The manuscript was accepted for publication in London last year by two separate publishing houses, as many were won over by the inadvertent and somewhat naive hero Young Kit.

Thanks for taking the time to read this; this novel has been a huge undertaking for me, and a deep and hard struggle against a publishing world with the assumption that the western novel is more or less dead. It took me 14 years to get a work finally accepted for publication, and Kit Cope Rides the High Country is it.

I wish desperately to share this lovingly written western-exoneration with you.

Here’s to bringing back a western section in every well-stocked bookstore in the world, fellas!

Kind Regards, Alan Eltron Barrell

SYNOPSIS

[b]When the infamous Indian renegade God Dog jumps his reservation and a family of innocent sod busters are massacred, a father and son murdered, and a mother and two daughters taken captive, a harrowing manhunt and desperate rescue mission must begin.

God Dog is fleeing into the uncharted wastes to the west known and feared as The Staked Planes: the waterless barren craggy wastes where even the white man is terrified to venture, but where the Comanche find themselves happily at home.

Meanwhile in the small Kansas town of Wagon Trail, a naive but ambitious young buffalo skinner turned peace-officer named Kit Cope, who has dreamed all his life of such an opportunity to prove himself, is determined to convince the level-headed town sheriff, Rainbow Cotton, to form a posse of men to hunt the Indian down and recover his captives, a harrowing manhunt that will test their very lives and bring many to an early end… for they must pick up the Indian’s trail and follow it unflinchingly into the unknown draws and distances of The Staked Planes, The Last Stronghold of the Comanche.

Fraught with adventure and peril, hope and disillusionment; cruelty, violence, and the persistence of boyish love, Kit Cope Rides the High Country is a story of two worlds at an end and the last stubborn holdouts on both sides who must meet for a final epic clash in an unseasonable echo of a former age.[/b]