Etiennette: Silvere, Le Secret (1859)

Targets in 1870 Wyoming When lawman Sam Taggart is killed by a long-range rifle shot, his two traveling companions, newly-minted schoolteacher Kate Shaw and Texas cowboy Monday Malone, are left unharmed. The shooter’s tracks point toward their destination, the town of Warbonnet. Since Kate and the marshal were hired sight-unseen, on the basis of letters, she persuades a reluctant Monday to take Taggart’s identity in hopes of rooting out the killer. Now these two greenhorns have to survive long enough to find a murderer. Can they also endure the bitter secrets each of them carries in their hearts? After a career as a CIA senior analyst, Rob Kresge was inspired by early Wyoming history, a territory and state which, to paraphrase Churchill on the Balkans, manufactured more history than could be consumed locally. Kresge took pieces from his own background (such as learning to ride in Wyoming’s Tetons) to craft a story made possible by the lack of identity documents in the early West. Basically, you could be anyone you claimed to be. Unless you met up with someone who knew better.