The Big Country

Best-selling author of The Kent Family  Chronicles and the three-volume Civil War  epic North And South, John  Jakes is one of America's favorite historical  novelists. But Jakes is also a master of Frontier fiction.  Here, for the first time in one volume, are eleven  of his finest stories of the American West and the  brave men and women who tamed it. You'll meet a  sheriff who faces a hardened killer in the strangest  gunfight in frontier history; a resourceful woman  who saves a rebel from a bitter life on the owl  hoot trail; a ruthless gunman who meets his match  in a three-year-old-girl; and a immigrant who  battles fear and prejudice in a frightened California  town. You'll also meet card sharks, railroaders,  posses, and medicine men as Jakes recaptures the  humor, violence, and adventure of the great American  frontier. Includes the brand-new, never  before-published story, Carolina Warpath,  and an essay, The Western ; and  How We Got It.