Westerns: The Spur Awards 2023

Eva Santos Moon is a burgeoning Chicana artist who practices the ancient, spiritual ways of bruje?ra and curanderisma, but she's at one of her lowest points--suffering from disorienting blackouts, creative stagnation, and a feeling of disconnect from her magickal roots. When her husband, a beloved university professor and the glue that holds their family together, is taken into custody for the shocking murder of their friend, Eva doesn't know whom to trust--least of all, herself. She soon falls under suspicion as a potential suspect, and her past rises to the surface, dredging up the truth about an eerily similar death from her childhood. Struggling with fragmented memories and self-doubt, an increasingly terrified Eva fears that she might have been involved in both murders. But why doesn't she remember? Only the dead women know for sure, and they're coming for her with a haunting vengeance. As she fights to keep her family out of danger, Eva realizes she must use her magick as a bruja to protect herself and her loved ones, while confronting her own dark history.

Rockwell "Rocky" Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife, Lou, raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death. As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy. Rocky is determined to protect his remaining family and the land where they've loved and lost so much. But when the government decides to build a Japanese American internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he's battled for years. Complicating matters is the fact that the idealistic Department of the Interior man assigned to build the camp, who only begins to understand the horror of his task after it may be too late, becomes infatuated with Sunny and entangled with the Rhodes family.

"In 1879, the notorious horse thief Doc Middleton rules the Niobrara rough country west of Holt County, Nebraska, with a loose affiliation of young outlaws, dubbed the Pony Boys. Albert "Kid" Wade, August John, Windy Barnes, Boots Harper, and a dozen other amoral roughnecks spent their days stealing horses, raising hell, and generally having the time of their lives. But nothing lasts forever, and the unorganized territories west are succumbing to complaints from settlers and the Indian agencies alike. What happens to the Pony Boys when law and order lands hard--and ruthless--at the end of a rope? As Doc struggles with change, and Kid Wade fights white-knuckled against it, young Augustus "Gus" John faces the most important challenge of his life. A challenge sure to tear at the fabrics of loyalty and friendship, rending the Pony Boys apart forever. A fictionalized account of Doc Middleton and the Pony Boys decline during the historical summer of 1879" --

"Former thief and wanted man Carson Stone dreams of a peaceful life on a ranch built by his own hands, but dreams don't always come without a steep price. To earn a stake, Carson rides west to collect the reward on a claim-jumper. The land is beautiful, but times are hard as the territory is ravaged by the latest Indian war and a mining boom gone bust. When Stone steps in to defend a family ambushed by murdering marauders, he makes a terrifying discovery--one of the hired killers carries a death list full of names and dollar amounts. But the names on this list belong to upstanding citizens, not criminals. When the local sheriff is gunned down in broad daylight, Carson takes on the one job he never wanted--pinning on a lawman's tin star to protect the innocent. A gang of ruthless killers are storming back to finish their work--and Carson Stone has just moved to the top of the death list" --

"Hewey Calloway is heading north to Colorado, on a horse drive for an old friend, Alvin Lawdermilk, when he gets word that one of his hired hands is planning to rob him. After the plot is foiled, the fugitive horsehand is on the run and leaving bodies in his wake. Deputized to help bring the criminal to justice, Hewey is bestowed with a weight of responsibility that he's long avoided. Never known for his skill--or lack thereof--with a pistol, he can only pray that he and retired Texas Ranger Hanley Baker will be enough to put an end to this trail of dastardly deeds.

"San Francisco music store owner Inez Stannert agrees to provide financial assistance to boardinghouse proprietor Moira Krause. When the common wall of the abandoned house adjoining Moira's is breached to expand her business, the corpse of a murdered man tumbles out, along with a worn canvas bag holding a fortune in gold coins. Then the locksmith who made the house's unbreakable locks is brutally slain, and the keys vanish. Inez and private detective Wolter de Bruijn set out to uncover the truth behind the killings" --

"On a lonely road in a remote desert stands a roadhouse. Formerly a home station on a now abandoned stagecoach route, it is the only source of water and supplies for miles. Accommodations are crude adearnd coarse, the hospitality rough and raw, the proprietor boorish and vulgar. Travelers are few and far between, and almost all must stop for water-- which comes at a price. A mounted mail carrier who visits the roadhouse with some regularity suspects there is more to the place than meets the eye, and he comes to believe that for some travelers the roadhouse is the end of the road"--

The story of how Yellowstone became the world's first national park amid the nationwide turmoil and racial violence of the Reconstruction era. In late July 1871, the geologist-explorer Ferdinand Hayden led a team of scientists through a narrow canyon into Yellowstone Basin, entering one of the last unmapped places in the country. The survey's discoveries led to the passage of the Yellowstone Act in 1872, which created the first national park in the world. Megan Kate Nelson examines the larger context of this American moment, illuminating Hayden's survey as a national project meant to give Americans a sense of achievement and unity in the wake of a destructive civil war. This book follows Hayden and two other protagonists in pursuit of their own agendas: Sitting Bull, a Lakota leader who asserted his peoples' claim to their homelands, and financier Jay Cooke, who wanted to secure his national reputation by building the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Great Northwest. Hayden, Cooke, and Sitting Bull staked their claims to Yellowstone at a critical moment in Reconstruction, when the Grant Administration and the 42nd Congress were testing the reach and the purpose of federal power across the nation. This is also a story of Indigenous resistance, the expansive reach of railroad, photographic, and publishing technologies, and the struggles of Black southerners to bring racial terrorists to justice. It reveals how the early 1870s were a turning point in the nation's history, as white Americans ultimately abandoned the the higher ideal of equality for all people, creating a much more fragile and divided United States.--

A dual biography of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, revealing in new detail the two most legendary and consequential American Indian leaders, who triumphed at the Battle of Little Big Horn and led Sioux resistance in the fierce final chapter of the "Indian Wars." --From book jacket.

"Setting up shop in rip-roaring Spanish Fort, Texas, in the early 1870s, Big Eddie Hager outfitted many cowboys in boots as they headed up the Chisholm Trail. Hagers fame and his company grew with the years, turning Hager Boots & Company, Incorporated, into a global legend. But when a Dallas newspaper reporter arrives in whats left of Spanish Fort, an old-timer sets the record straight by telling the true story of the man behind the Hager legend-the real cobbler of Spanish Fort."--

"Wish Upon a Crawdad takes place at the end of the Great Depression (1940), during the early years of the electrification of rural America. The fictional story is told through the eyes of twelve-year-old Ruby Mae Ryan who lives on her family's farm in rural Oregon. One of her wishes is to get electricity ... Her family has joined the local electric co-op and they do what they can to help bring electricity to their valley. Now, with electricity on its way, Ruby has another wish and she's working hard to make it come true by the time electricity arrives"--

A thirteen-year-old girl living in an 1880 Colorado gold-mining town witnesses the hardships of her community as she assists her father, the town doctor.