When Cowboys Die - Paperback

by Patrick Dearen (Author)

A man either chases his dreams, or he dies. Present-day ranch hand Charlie Lyles longs for an era before mechanization, when a cowboy's greatest ally was his horse. He remembers stories of cattle drives and stampedes and shallow graves in lonesome country. Society has pushed Charlie toward a conformity that he hates, but he is about to change the rules. At a remote line shack in West Texas, he steals a horse, leaving a perfectly good pickup behind. His theft leads to a manhunt with a helicopter and assault weapons, but his trackers are headed into territory that hasn't changed in a century . . . and they are trailing a man born a hundred years too late.

A Spur Award finalist, When Cowboys Die has been acclaimed as "spellbinding" and "an instant classic." This new volume, the first print edition in twenty-five years, includes a preface and "Requiem for a Cowboy," a documented account of the 1976 Texas manhunt that inspired the novel.

Author Biography

Winner of the Spur Award of Western Writers of America, PATRICK DEAREN is the author of sixteen novels and ten nonfiction books. A native West Texan, he is a former journalist whose coverage of a 1976 manhunt in Coke County, Texas, inspired When Cowboys Die. See patrickdearen.com for more information.