Written in Blood

"…a fast-paced western adventure that ropes in subjects of prejudice, race, and death…a captivating and engrossing read." (Quill and Quire)

Set in the harsh desert world of the Arizona Territory and northern Mexico during the 1870s, Written in Blood, the first installment of the Desert Legends Trilogy, follows young Jim Doolen as he attempts to find some trace of the father who abandoned his family ten years earlier. As he travels through a scorched landscape very different from the lush West Coast forests of his home, Jim crosses paths with an assortment of intriguing characters, including an Apache warrior, a cave-dwelling mystic, an old Mexican revolutionary and a mysterious cowboy. And with each encounter he learns something more of the strange world he has entered and adds one more link in a chain that leads back to his father-and a dark, violent past. Jim comes to realize that his father's life was much more complex than he had imagined, and that, in discovering his past, he has opened the way to his future.

That future is told in Ghost Moon, where Jim meets Billy the Kid who draws him into a violent range war and its bloody conclusion on the streets of Lincoln.

The Trilogy concludes with Victorio's War. Jim becomes a scout for the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry and finds himself in the middle of a brutal war to force Victorio's Apaches onto a reservation far from their traditional lands. As he begins to understand the plight of the doomed Apaches, he finds his loyalties divided, and seems destined to share their fate.

 

"Told in a terse, present-tense narrative, Jim's adventures will thrill all fans of traditional pulp-style oaters." (Booklist)

 

"Has all the markers of a classic Western...Wilson's writing is vivid." (CM Magazine)

 

"The story is very well written and…is full of tension and adventure…Recommended." (Tri State YA Book Review Committee)