The BLACKSMITH and the Sheepherder's Daughter (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780996604284)

Young Adult Novel set in the early 1850's before statehood in the New Mexico territory. The story centers around two major characters: young, Molly Broderick and Buzz Calder, the town Blacksmith.

Back in 1845, the Brodericks, a sheepherding family from Utah had just purchased land near the small, fictitious village of Warm Springs, New Mexico. hoping to raise sheep. They hadn't even settled into their new digs when marauders swooped down and destroyed both man and beast. The only survivor was ten-year-old Molly. She was taken in by the local doctor and his wife.

Now fifteen, Molly is a vibrant, precocious member of the community -- a bit headstrong, but ever trying to increase in knowledge and understanding. She has several mentors, but especially the town blacksmith, whom she affectionately calls "Uncle Buzz."

In a prior life, Buzz Calder had been an attorney in Kansas City, Missouri. After four years of sitting in an office going over case law, or standing before a judge, arguing over foul deeds of miscreants or issues of slave ownership, he realized he was yearning for a more active lifestyle; the west was calling him. His father offered him a partnership in the gunsmithing business, but after less than a year, he bid adieu to his folks and hitched a ride on a west bound wagon-train. That was more than a dozen years ago. He wound up in Warm Springs, and with the "gun-smithing" he'd experienced in his dad's shop, he thought he'd try his hand at the forge.

Our story wends it way through and between the lives of these two -- and others along the way. It's a "feel good", story from start to finish. There are good guys and bad guys; good times and bad; heartache and laughter. romance and mayhem. Come along for a wholesome adventure story of the old west.