Western Survival

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the High Sierras. But Smoke Jensen and his children, Louis and Denise, won't let a little snow stop them from heading to Reno for the holidays. There are two ways for them to get there: the long way, going around the Sierra Nevada Mountains, or the short way, going right through them. Smoke decides to take a gamble. They'll follow the trail that, decades earlier, brought the legendary Donner Party to a gruesome, tragic end....

Encounters in Avalanche Country tells the story of mountain communities' responses to disaster over a century of social change and rapid industrialization. As mining and railway companies triggered new kinds of disasters, ideas about environmental risk and responsibility were increasingly negotiated by mountain laborers, at the elite levels among corporations, and in socially charged civil suits.

After the violent deaths of his mother and father at the hands of evil, young Samuel, a.k.a. Night Hunter, begins his quest for revenge. His strong upbringing from both his shaman great-grandfather and the Sioux tribe, along with the faith and hope of his Irish heritage, compel him to begin his epic journey for justice.

On the vast and indescribably beautiful South Rim of the Grand Canyon a young Hualapai boy faces a bleak future in 1902. River Thunder's mother has just passed into the Spirit World and River Thunder will carry his flute, courage and trusting innocence to the Hackberry Day School still standing today on old Route 66 while never once imagining how his fate will one day soar like an eagle over the magnificent Grand Canyon.

Sir Walter Ralegh was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. She showered him with estates and political appointments. He envisioned her becoming empress of a universal empire. She gave him the opportunity to lead the way. In Walter Ralegh, Alan Gallay shows that, while Ralegh may be best known for founding the failed Roanoke colony, his historical importance vastly exceeds that enterprise. Inspired by the mystical religious philosophy of hermeticism, Ralegh led English attempts to colonize in North America, South America, and Ireland.

Mungo Park was an explorer of the real kind. In 1795, only aged 24, he left Gambia for the uncharted interior of Africa, in a journey that would be filled with tragedy, heroism, and adventure. Park was the first European to ever reach the river Niger and the legendary city of Timbuctoo, thus resolving, once and for all, a century-old geographic debate. He travelled with local guides and later entirely alone, through warring kingdoms, robberies, imprisonment, and extreme duress. By the time he returned to Gambia, he had long been given up for dead.

Seventeen-year-old Serendipity "Pity" Jones inherited two things from her mother: a pair of six shooters and perfect aim. She's been offered a life of fame and fortune in Cessation, a glittering city where lawlessness is a way of life. But the price she pays for her freedom may be too great....In this extraordinary debut from Lyndsay Ely, the West is once again wild after a Second Civil War fractures the U.S. into a broken, dangerous land. Pity's struggle against the dark and twisted underbelly of a corrupt city will haunt you long after the final bullet is shot.

Abandoned by the Wagon Train is about a teacher who needs to find a new job because her a schoolhouse is being torn down. Looking in the newspaper to see what might be available - anywhere - she spots an ad for both a schoolteacher in California and a mail order bride wanted by the same store owner who placed the ad. Chancing it, she writes to him and then deciding to risk it all she packs up her things and heads out west on a wagon train.

These three short stories give listeners a dog’s-eye view of the action and adventure associated with the American West. From an award-winning poet, these stories provide a window into the sometimes fickle relationship between man and dog. Barbara Nelson Blinn used writing as a way to escape her abusive marriage, and these stories are indeed an escape, as listeners will have the opportunity to befriend three different canines, each with their own story filled with mystery, adventure, and the underlying message that controlling the pet population is of utmost importance.