The Return of the Mucker

The remarkable story of Billy Byrne, the vicious, hardened Chicago thug and ruffian who, answering to the magical touch of a great love, gradually changed his entire point of view, ethical standards, and character, until from fear and loathing the beautiful Barbara Harding, daughter of a New York millionaire, came to trust and at last to love him. In the end, Billy, believing the gulf between “Grand Avenue and Riverside Drive” was too wide to be bridged even by love itself, refused to marry Barbara, and left her. When the present story opens over a year has elapsed and Byrne finds himself in further scrapes in revolutionary Mexico. Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the world’s most popular authors. With no previous experience as an author, he wrote and sold his first novel–_A Princess of Mars_–in 1912. In the ensuing thirty-eight years until his death in 1950, Burroughs wrote ninety-one books and a host of short stories and articles. Although best known as the creator of the classic Tarzan of the Apes and John Carter of Mars, his restless imagination knew few bounds. Burroughs’s prolific pen ranged from the American West to primitive Africa and on to romantic adventure on the moon, the planets, and even beyond the farthest star.