Perseverance

The author of twenty-seven books, Patrick Dearen is a former award-winning reporter for two West Texas daily newspapers. As a nonfiction writer, Dearen has produced books such as A Cowboy of the Pecos; Saddling Up Anyway: The Dangerous Lives of Old-Time Cowboys; and Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier, Revisited. His research has led to sixteen novels, including The Big Drift, winner of the Spur Award of Western Writers of America and the Peacemaker Award of Western Fictioneers. His other western-themed novels include When Cowboys Die (a Spur Award finalist); The End of Nowhere; The Illegal Man; To Hell or the Pecos; and Perseverance. His novels Apache Lament and Dead Man's Boot both received the Elmer Kelton Award from the Academy of Western Artists.A ragtime pianist and wilderness enthusiast, Dearen lives with his wife in Texas.

It was 1932, the depths of the Great Depression, and thousands of desperate people rode the rails in search of jobs, homes, and hope. For some, the tracks were a road to nowhere, a dead end in a boxcar or under the wheels or in a sea of emptiness. Their fate seemed certain-until Ish Watson grabbed the rungs of a passing freight train bound for a dying relative on the Texas Gulf Coast.He brought with him the traits bestowed by his rural upbringing faith, conviction and dedication. But now he faced thundering wheels ready to mutilate and knife-wielding hobos restless to kill, a barreling train anxious to derail and railway "bulls" itching to shoot. Only here in life's trenches would he meet up with the dregs of society: the wayward and the runaways, the dope addicts and the prostitutes, the winos and criminals. The locomotive's black smoke drifted back down the line to cove them all like a shroud, but it was more than death they faced-for this train would not stop until it carried them all to their destinies.And their only hope was Ish's perseverance.This provocative novel, by a finalist for the Spur Award of Western Writers of America, may well challenge your perspective on life.