American West Trilogy
3 primary works Complete
Book 1
A richly authentic epic adventure of rough-hewn men and courageous women, set in the hard country of the American Southwest frontier.
Hard Country is a rare and extraordinary story of one family’s struggle to settle and endure in the vast, untamed territory of New Mexico.
In the wake of the death of his wife as she gives birth to his son, and the killing of his brother on the West Texas plains, John Kerney is forced to give up his ranch, leave his son behind, and strike out in search of the murderous outlaws and a place where he can start over. He drifts south until he meets a man who offers him work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory and forever changes his life.
Spanning the years of 1875 to 1918, Hard Country is the Western reinvented and enlarged into a saga that above all celebrates the people and the land of the great Southwest.
Hard Country is a rare and extraordinary story of one family’s struggle to settle and endure in the vast, untamed territory of New Mexico.
In the wake of the death of his wife as she gives birth to his son, and the killing of his brother on the West Texas plains, John Kerney is forced to give up his ranch, leave his son behind, and strike out in search of the murderous outlaws and a place where he can start over. He drifts south until he meets a man who offers him work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory and forever changes his life.
Spanning the years of 1875 to 1918, Hard Country is the Western reinvented and enlarged into a saga that above all celebrates the people and the land of the great Southwest.
Book 2
Catapulted into early adulthood after the death of an older brother he idolized, eight-year-old Matthew Kerney assumes difficult responsibilities to save the family ranch against a backdrop of the Great Depression and a drought-stricken Tularosa Basin.
Book 3
"The grand saga of an American ranching family continues in The Last Ranch, the final, mesmerizing book of New York Times bestseller Michael McGarrity's gripping and richly authentic American West trilogy. When Matthew Kerney returns to his ranch in the beautiful San Andres Mountains after serving in Sicily during World War II, he must not only fight to recover physically and emotionally from a devastating war injury, but he must also battle attempts by the U.S. Army to seize control of his land for expanded weapons testing. Forced off public grazing lands, banned from gathering his cattle on high mountain pastures, and confronted by military police guarding a high security army post on the northern reaches of the range, Matt finds himself at the center of a heavy-handed government land-grab. The reasons behind this surge of secrecy and control become clear when Matt witnesses the boiling, blinding explosion of the first atom bomb at Trinity Site. As he struggles with an aging, stove-up father no longer able to carry a heavy load at the ranch, an ex-convict intent on killing him, and a failing relationship with a woman he dearly loves, Matt must draw upon all his mental and physical resources to keep his world--and the people in it--from collapsing. Following the New York Times bestselling Hard Country and its sequel Backlands, The Last Ranch enthralls with the deeply rich, sometimes heartbreaking Kerney family saga as it steps brilliantly into the mid-twentieth-century world of the new American West"--