The first review for “Trail Angel” comes from Booklist, and I don’t think I could be happier with it. Booklist is one of four trade magazines that do pre-publication reviews for libraries, bookstores and others looking for guidance in what titles they order. The reviews are necessarily short, but I thought the reviewer included a great plot synopsis. Here’s the full review:
Advanced Review – Uncorrected Proof Booklist Online Exclusive: July 21, 2016
Trail Angel. Catron, Derek (Author) Aug 2016. 358 p. Five Star, hardcover, $25.95. (9781432832803).
Drink in this opening sentence: “From the banks of the flat, broad river, Annabelle Rutledge Holcombe looked east toward everything she had known.” Who is Annabelle? She’s a Civil War widow who’s staking everything—her life, her family’s lives—on a dangerous journey to Montana and the slim prospect of finding prosperity in the gold fields. She’s guided on her trek by Josey Angel, an ex-cavalryman whose past is littered with dead bodies and caked in blood. Each sees in the other a way to start looking forward and to stop dwelling on the past. Catron uses a real historical event as his backdrop (the story is set during the run-up to the violent war between the U.S. and the Sioux), and he throws in some immediate danger in the form of some nasties who are following Annabelle’s wagon train. Beyond that, though, this is a story of two lost people who find each other and a way to keep on living. A finely constructed, well-told western.
— David Pitt
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