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Book Cover for: Faraway Blue, Max Evans

Faraway Blue

Max Evans

Evans paints marvelous word pictures of a land and people he knows extremely well.--Booklist

As always with Evans, written with a good sense of the times and place.--Kirkus

First published in 1999, Faraway Blue is based on the real-life exploits of Sergeant Moses Williams, former slave, Civil War veteran, and Buffalo Soldier in the Ninth Cavalry Regiment. Included in Moses's story are four women and two men representing the ethnic groups and economic levels found in the late 1800s American Southwest.

At the story's opening, Williams's cavalry unit has one assignment: kill Apaches in the faraway blue mountains of southwestern New Mexico Territory, also known as the Black Range. As a fighter in the white man's campaign to obliterate the Indians and take over their lands, Williams finds a nemesis in Nana, an old Warm Springs Apache warrior who is a tactical genius. Nana leads his small band of followers to repeatedly strike area mining camps and settlements. Both men know they must meet before the end of the war and a maddening cat-and-mouse pursuit ensues.

Williams is sustained by his love for Sheela Jones, a mulatto whom he wants to marry when the army will allow it. But Sheela's love for Moses guides her to take an immense risk just as Moses and Nana ride out to settle their score.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Unm Press
  • Publish Date: Oct 31st, 2005
  • Pages: 252
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.06in - 5.50in - 0.74in - 0.75lb
  • EAN: 9780826335852
  • Categories: Historical - GeneralWesterns - General

About the Author

Evans, Max: - Max Evans is the author of over thirty works of fiction and nonfiction. He is the recipient of the Spur, Wrangler, and Owen Wister awards, and he is the subject of the biography Ol' Max Evans: The First Thousand Years and a documentary film of the same title. Evans has made his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for over fifty years.

Praise for this book

""Faraway Blue" is a welcome reminder of just how good a storyteller Max Evans is."
"Evans tells a crackling, fast-paced story that is not afraid to take time for thought and tenderness."
"Evans has a gift with storytelling. His descriptions are intense and colorful. There is beauty in the starkenss of the 'faraway blue'."
"ÝEvans¨ creates a world in which family fealty, youthful passion, aged wisdom and the bonds of community feel real, creating along the way very strong women characters who help to bust out of any mere genre classification and into the larger realm of literature."
"[Evans] creates a world in which family fealty, youthful passion, aged wisdom and the bonds of community feel real, creating along the way very strong women characters who help to bust out of any mere genre classification and into the larger realm of literature."