Cow Creek (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692267189)

Teenage boys, Emil and Able set out from Oakland, Nebraska, and travel north to experience the mysterious Indian territories and action-packed Wild West depicted in their dime novels. The plan is to become ranch hands at Cow Creek, but just two days in, Able gets injured and is forced to turn back for home. Naively, Emil forges ahead to face whatever the harsh terrain and its even harsher inhabitants are going to throw at him, eventually encountering wolves, violent storms, and the impossible decision of taking or sparing another human being's life in order to save his own.

The unthinkable cruelties of the native reservations and the struggles of a ranch trying to keep its cattle empire alive during changing times, combined with the lewd behavior Emil's innocent eyes witness on his days off, overwhelm him with a picture of the dying West that doesn't look anything like his fantasy, and instead shakes his Christian upbringing to the core.

Experience the final gasps of Indian tribes and the American West through the eyes of an impressionable, fifteen-year-old boy looking for adventure but instead finding adulthood. It explores many unfortunate circumstances that, though originating in the nineteenth century, still persist today.