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Title: A dark, brooding western
Review: This offering by Luke Short, one of the genre's best storytellers, is, on the surface, a familiar tale of a cattle baron grabbing grazing land and prohibiting a sheep herder from establishing an outfit and using his ranch hands to carry out his dirty work. The novel is a subtle study in human character and Short expertly details each of the novel's characters with a deep understanding of the human psyche that makes an ordinary range war tale more interesting than it should be. The common threads of human behavior are on display, the noble and the ignoble, as the story unfolds towards its inevitable denouement. The honesty and dedication of a cowhand in standing up to a murderous bully and his thugs is the theme here but the rich characterizations of the players herein make this fine work one of the best westerns ever written.
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