I’m a little behind the game in getting this posted, but I should note that the latest Rab Sinclair novel released December 21.
“A Vast and Desolate Land” finds Rab Sinclair crossing the Llano Estacado with a group of vaqueros and hired guns when he comes across a band of renegade Comanche who are seeking justice after a woman from their tribe was violated and murdered by a passing band of buffalo hunters.
Sinclair and his outfit become thrust into the middle of this drama when the Comanche decide that if they cannot punish the guilty they will punish the innocent.
One of my goals in this novel was to capture the loneliness of the Llano Estacado.
This tableland in west Texas and east New Mexico is a fascinating place to me. It is bigger than the state of Indiana. Water is scarce. The wind strips the land bare. I have a friend who lives in Lubbock, Texas, which sits on the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado, and she once described it to me as, “So flat I can see the Pyramids.”
I’ve read many accounts from the first Spanish and American explorers who came through this area in the 1700s and early 1800s. The land was brutal on travelers, and they truly feared to travel into the Llano Estacado.
It was a vast and desolate land.
But if you travel through here now, particularly if you know of how it was once feared by explorers, you can’t help but be struck at the ingenuity and endurance of man.
In 150 years, we have conquered this place.
Today, the Llano Estacado is home to farms and ranches, little towns and large cities.
For most people, their only exposure (if they have any) to the Llano Estacado is cutting across it on I-40. In fact, you might pass over the tableland and not even realize what it is or be able to guess at all about its history.
Still, in some places, it does not take much imagination to look out across the wide emptiness of the Staked Plains and understand, if only for a moment, how terrifying it must have been to an explorer who didn’t have Google Maps to tell him how much farther to the next convenience store.
I hope you enjoy reading the novel as much as I enjoyed writing it.
I’m proud of the story. If you’ve enjoyed the other novels featuring Rab Sinclair, I think you’ll be pleased with this installment in the series. Click here to get the new novel, and if you enjoy it, be sure to leave a review and let me know what you think!