Indian Winter

"Just when I thought Westerns were a dying breed, along comes John Stag Hanson's northwestern presenting a balls-out rip-snorter that plunges the reader into an inevitable battle between good and evil. While Luke Jackson is a classic heroic, Luke himself is anything but typical. His wilderness and in-town courage contrasts intriguingly with his smoldering passions, which conflict in turn with his bone-deep loyalties. Divided here, they knit between those for his best friend Johnnie Hopkins and Johnnie's extraordinary wife Linda, for whom Luke's long-held torch has been, astonishingly, now mutually ignited. This leads to Luke's pursuit of: first, his post-firing/post-affair identity, and next, of the maniacal Sturgeons brothers, in an evocative tale of bone-deep paradox as much as of conflicted commitments of the heart - Linda's conflicts perhaps more severe than Luke's. Bemidji is a cold spot in northern Minnesota, but this novel is red-hot with its smokin' Colts, Native American lore, ruthless renegades, star-crossed lovers, and a Zhivago-like narrative that casts a spell that lingers long after the final page is turned, as the heart continues to beat." - Rick Gilmore, international traveler/lecturer/scholar emeritus