title: Hunted: A Novel
author:  John Holt 
description: A third-generation rancher goes up against a corporate behemoth in this eloquent if preachy novel by Holt (Montana Fly-Fishing Guide; Coyote Nowhere-In Search of America's Last Frontier). Joe Graves is a self-sufficient loner born on a stormy night in the back of a pick-up truck. For decades, his family has struggled to survive in arid southeastern Montana, becoming intimately acquainted with the land and its fauna. When the nefarious and aptly named Dark Star corporation comes nosing around the Graves property, Joe discovers that his father sold the family's mineral rights before he died, and Dark Star is now interested in strip-mining the ranch for coal. Insult is added to injury when Mickey, the closest thing Joe has to a lover, leaves him for Dark Star's representative. As he battles the corporation seeking to destroy his rural heaven, Joe must also fight his urge to lose control and revenge himself on those who have interrupted his life. He is, as his enemies define him, "on a long-term, slow burn that could ignite at any moment at the slightest provocation." But it is nature that deflects the corporation in the end, erecting a series of incredible obstacles, like spontaneously combusting flora, ferocious storms and irate rattlesnakes. The novel is unashamedly polemical, and Joe's self-righteousness can be grating, but Holt's spare prose and fierce, gritty descriptions of hunting and violent weather rescue his story from one-dimensionality. <br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: THE HUNTED
  
  by
  
  Jo McCready
  
  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are
  entirely coincidental.
  
  THE HUNTED
  
   **First edition. September 14, 2020.**
  
  Copyright © 2020 Jo McCready.
  
  ISBN: 978-0473536374
  
  Written by Jo McCready.
  
   **Table of Contents**
  
  Title Page
  
  Copyright Page
  
  Dedication
  
  Prologue
  
  Chapter 1
  
  Chapter 2
  
  Chapter 3
  
  Chapter 4
  
  Chapter 6
  
  Chapter 7
  
  Chapter 8
  
  Chapter 9
  
  Chapter 10
  
  Chapter 11
  
  Chapter 12
  
  Chapter 13
  
  Chapter 14
  
  Chapter 15
  
  Chapter 16
  
  Chapter17
  
  Chapter 18
  
  Chapter 19
  
  Chapter 20
  
  Chapter 21
  
  Chapter 22
  
  Chapter 23
  
  Chapter 24
  
  Chapter 25
  
  Chapter 26
  
  Chapter 27
  
  Chapter 28
  
  Chapter 29
  
  Epilogue
  
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  Also By Jo McCready
  
  About the Author
  
   ****
  
  > > To the real RJ,
  
  > > a true inspiration.
  
  > > (she made me write that)
  
   **Prologue**
  
  She moved silently, closing in on her prey, her feet automatically seeking out
  soft patches of ground on which to tread. The gently dimming light of t