Showing results by author "Jane Candia Coleman" in All Categories

Jane Candia Coleman is a natural storyteller whose characters come from the lands between the southwestern valleys of Arizona and the Gila Mountains of New Mexico. The night Billy the Kid died is hauntingly depicted in "Corrido for Billy". "Lady Flo" is a memoir, based on historical fact, of the black wife of an Irish nobleman. "Moving On" depicts a young girl abandoned by her family who finds her way with an itinerant Jewish peddler. And "Are You Coming Back, Phin Montana?" is the winner of the 1995 Spur Award for Best Western Short Fiction.

“Sometimes,” the legendary outlaw Belle Starr reflects, “you got to use your brains. Sometimes you got to go for the dream and never mind what anybody thinks or says. Life's pretty short. If I don't break my neck on a green horse, or get hanged, or shot, I'll sit on my porch when I'm old and remember the good times, all of 'em, and how every once in a while, I found glory.”

She ran her husband off the ranch; put the kids to work - now Addie needs more cattle. She can't afford them, but there's another way.

On a rainy afternoon in 1877 Flossie Carmichael, who had tried to kill herself and her husband, was released from the State Asylum for the Insane. Now she is determined to do something perhaps no less insane, homestead in a remote part of Arizona Territory. An abandoned child, a dangerous gang of rustlers, and a lone wandering Apache challenge any hope she might have had for a tranquil life.

Susannah is a yellow-haired beauty, the dream of every man for 50 miles, but forbidden love tempts her. If she'd known of the violence to come, she wouldn't have been so trusting.

She rode over us, not caring who was hurt. When the old playboy died, the truth came out about who was the strongest and smartest person in Horse Creek.

Abandoned to starve or freeze, young Nell had to be tougher than most men and bolder than most women, otherwise death was certain.

She was Wyatt Earp's woman. He tried to protect her, but the battle at the OK Corral was the beginning of the end.

One crazy morning in the deadest place on earth, the local bum shows up with a gangly underfed horse and challenges all comers to a race! Only an old drunk will bet on him. What could she know?

Billy the Kid was hiding at the Maxwell Ranch at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, when Pete Maxwell, concerned by the attentions being paid to Billy by his sister Paulita, got a message to Pat Garrett who's hunting Billy. Garrett learns that not only gunfighters were loyal to the Kid.

The trains don't stop anymore in Lick Log Station, as once they did. It was on one of those trains that Phin Montana first came to Lick Log so many years ago. Young Glory's mother was only 19 then, the day she first met Phin Montana, and it seems to Glory now that her mother has never been alive since the day Phin Montana left, the same way he had come.

The old Apache sat quiet as stone - until a local tough challenged him. Big mistake. Never mess with a battle-tested warrior.

Sara Marcello, a writer with roots in Italy, is invited to the island villa of Ugo and Olivia Bellini, two wealthy and worldly antiquarians. In this place of myth, belonging as much to Homer and Prospero as to the present, Sara discovers that she is at the center of Olivia's obsessive desire to possess the secret of creative genius. And, although she doesn't know it, Sara is also replaying the sixty-year-old tragedy of her grandmother, Gelsomina.

Joanna O'Keefe sells off the family holdings in Texas to go find her husband in New Mexico territory. He went with John McLeod, dreaming of a cattle empire with millions of acres for the taking. On her way, Joanna meets Angus McLeod, bound to join his brother. When they arrive at the Circle MC they learn Alex has been murdered by unknown assailants.

Pearl Taylor left her conventional home and life in Toledo, Ohio, to take up gambling on the Mississippi. She survived life in a boom camp in the Arizona Territory and ultimately became an outlaw. Once caught, she awaited trial for an armed stagecoach robbery, while reporters dubbed her "The Bandit Queen".

To Old Pete's owner, it had always seemed that Pete would be the first to go. At 30 years of age, it even appeared likely. Now Old Pete's owner is confined to a hospital bed, though, and Old Pete is still going strong. But there might be some way that they could get together again for a last ride, prospecting up a mountain, just the two of them, who would have been together for a longer time than most married folks.

Jake, a cruel and abusive husband, inexplicably sends Nan and her son to a Western dude ranch. There, they recover from their mistreatment, and meet Ben, the ranch owner. Ben is a Western man schooled by his faithless ex-wife in the ways of human unhappiness. Nan and Ben realize that they have much in common, and that they share a mutual attraction. However, Nan still has hopes that Jake can reform. But when Nan and her son return home, Jake's hostility drives the boy to attempt suicide.