Gold Under Ice

“It’s rare that you get a writer like Carol Buchanan; an historian with a novelist’s ear capable of rending the individual voices of character into the orchestral narrative of a sweeping story.” Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire series of contemporary mystery novels, and creator of the hit Longmire western drama series now running on Netflix. Gripping,… engaging story of the Old West. Daniel Stark (is a) frontier attorney trying to do right by his family while chasing a fortune in gold. (Outside Bozeman, Winter 2010-2011) Don’t miss Carol Buchanan’s newest novel, The Ghost at Beaverhead Rock, available now. In this third novel of the Vigilante Quartet, lawyer Daniel Stark, the hero of God’s Thunderbolt and The Devil in the Bottle, rescues a man from drowning when the ice breaks on Alder Creek. Recovering, he informs Dan that he represents the Bank of New York and was sent by Dan’s autocratic grandfather to bring him back with his gold to pay the debt Dan’s family owes the bank. Dan delays his return as long as he can. Not only does he not have enough gold to pay the debt in full, he does not want to leave his common law wife, Martha, unprotected for fear her brutal first husband will come back. When at last he returns to New York, he finds that Grandfather has made a pledge to the bank: if Dan cannot repay the loan in full, he will be forced to stay and work in Grandfather’s law firm until the debt is repaid. Seeking a quick way to get enough gold, he takes up trading in the Gold Room on Wall Street where fortunes are made — and more often lost. Where the rising price of gold triggers Confederate sympathizers’ singing raucous choruses of “Dixie.” And President Abraham Lincoln has said he “wished all gold traders were shot in the head.” Finalist for the 2011 Spur for Best Long Novel, Gold under Ice is Book 3 in Carol Buchanan’s Vigilante Quartet. Book 1 is God’s Thunderbolt; Book 2 is The Devil in the Bottle.