Eli is a harmonica-playing teenager working in a livery stable in Sheepshank, Colorado in 1889 when he witnesses the town’s bank explode in a shower of coins and a gang of robbers make their getaway with $30,000 in gold bullion. He recognizes the desperados…and offers to share their identities with Tracker Byrd if the half-breed Indian expert at reading trails will take him on as his apprentice. Byrd agrees, they join the town’s whiskey-drinking posse, and their wild adventure begins.
“Wagoner transmutes this heist into pure sunshine with his alchemical story-telling. What follows has as many surprises as the spines on a cactus. An impeccable mingling of pace and humor.” New York Times
“A wild and humorous adventure story.” Chicago Tribune
“A humorous, skillfully-crafted novel that rises to a level of excellence.” Baltimore Sun
“Tracker should be cherished as fine entertainment of unsurpassed quality.” Buffalo News
“It’s high-grade escapism, with a rich vein of down-to-earth philosophy and good humor. If you like True Gritand Mark Twain, you’ll take to this like hot biscuits on a cold morning.”Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A comic, laconic, folksy yarn that’s full of surprises, excitement and laughter. Wagoner’s fun is contagious. Sure-fire entertainment.” Yazoo Herald
“Wagoner endures as a national literary resource, precious but untapped. I worry and fret he isn’t better known. Wagoner the prose stylist is in chronic debt to Wagoner the accomplished poet. Only In Wagoner’s trust does vintage-colloquial American English emerge as an instrument of rich beauty” Philadelphia Inquirer
“An entrancing, humorous and human experience. There are a great many belly laughs, chuckles and out-and-out jaw-openers and wheezers in this tale.” Montgomery Advertiser
“Any poet who writes comic westerns deserves a prize, even if it’s only your reading of him.” South Bend Tribune
David Wagoner /
Western
