| Sometimes
There Were Heroes
A novel by Douglas C. Jones
A
story of Texas heroes, linking Spanish colonial history with
the Civil War.
Arkansas
native Douglas C. Jones (1924–1998) ranks right up there
with Larry McMurtry, A.B. Guthrie, and Ron Hansen. Author
of nineteen historical Westerns, including The Court-Martial
of George Armstrong Custer, which was made into a Hallmark
Hall of Fame movie, Arrest Sitting Bull, and Elkhorn
Tavern, Jones was a three-time recipient of the Golden
Spur Award, and in 1993, he received the Owen Wister Award
for Lifetime Contribution and Achievement from the Western
Writers of America.
His
final novel, Sometimes there Were Heroes, originally
published in 2000 and now in paperback, is the riveting tale
of the brave and driven men and women of early Texas, told
against the color backdrop of Bexar, the tiny Spanish mission
that would later become San Antonio.
As
witnessed through the unforgettable characters of the "Mexican
Gringo" Paco Salazar, a German immigrant named Sophie,
and the young Oscar Schiller, this history is made rich with
intrigue, danger, murder and love as disparate cultures clash
and bond on the American frontier. Tonkawa Indians and Bavarian
settlers, Mexicans and Texicans, Comanches and Angelos all
mingle memorably in this riveting drama.
Here
are Sam Houston and Santa Ana, the Alamo, the founding of
the Republic of Texas, the Texas Rangers, the forty-Niner
Gold Rush, and the Civil War, all seamlessly woven into a
suspenseful and colorful tale.
The
author's own pencil and charcoal drawings further enliven
the novel. From prologue to epilogue, this is a suspenseful
book that will be hard to put aside until it is finished.
"This
is good fiction, grippingly plotted . . . in Douglas Jones's
capable and experienced hands, all the characters become real."
—Donald
Harington, author of The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks:
A Novel
"Slowly
but with infinite grace, Jones is creating a masterful fictional
history of America."
—Washington
Post
"Jones
is a superb storyteller and authentic chronicler of the American
West."
—Los
Angeles Times Book Review
"A
master storyteller."
—Publishers
Weekly
"In
a series of splendid historical novels Jones has dramatized
the human dimension beneath such events as the Civil War,
the Indian Wars, and the settlement of the Western frontier."
—Library
Journal
"In
Jones's ornately detailed novels, every little plot stroke
has its historical context."
—New
York Times Book Review
"Jones
has to be one of the most knowlegeable and imaginative writers
of the American West."
—School
Library Journal
Author
of eighteen previous Western sagas, including The Court-Martial
of George Armstrong Custer (1976, Scribners), This
Savage Race (1992, Henry Holt) and Come
Winter (1992, University of Arkansas Press), Douglas
C. Jones has a loyal international readership.
382
pages
$16.95 (s) paper
978-1-55728-807-3 | 1-55728-807-0
2005
6"x9"
400 pages, 10 illustrations
$39.95 (s) cloth
978-1-55728-610-9 | 1-55728-610-8
2000
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