Boone's Lick by Larry McMurtry

Boone's Lick is a backwater town in Missouri . The setting is the American West during the Civil War.  Mary Margaret Cecil and her growing family are living off the land the best they can.  Her husband Dickie is a supplier for the forts of the US Army and travels far and wide securing himself with an Indian wife and family at every fort on the Oregon Trail.  Mary Margaret has had enough of his never-do-well ways and decides to pack up her family and her beloved brother-in-law, Uncle Seth, in a wagon and travel up the Missouri River to find her husband Dickie and put an end to his galavanting ways.  Along the way they procure an old Indian who guides them and a French traveling minister who sort of helps guide them.  They lose old Grandpa Crackenthorpe in a storm, they meet several bands of Indians, including Pawnee, Comanche, Sioux, and the terrifying Blackfoot, as well as three Indian families of Dickie's.  When they finally reach Wyoming and find "Pa", Mary Margaret delivers him his walking papers. 

Among the characters are the shy but ambitious son Shay, his temperous brother G.T., their fearless little sister Neva, baby Marcy, Mary Margaret or "Ma", crazy and delusional Grandpa Crackenthorpe, the family caretaker Uncle Seth, Ma's whore sister Aunt Rosie, Wild Bill Hickok, Sheriff Baldy Stone, the all-knowing Indian Charlie Seven Days, father Pere Villy, and the infamous Dick Cecil himself. 

This book is so humorous, I found myself giggling at every turn of a page.  The frontier life and Civil War era is luring to me and I enjoyed it very much.  Larry McMurtry is at his very best and cannot be outwritten when it comes to westerns.  The book was published in 2000 by Simon & Schuster Inc.  Go get it right away, you won't be sorry!

The Way of the Coyote by Elmer Kelton

It is the end of the Civil War, in the 1860s.  Rusty Shannon is a former Texas Ranger who rescues a small boy from his captives, the Comanche Indians.  The two journey to Rusty's Texas home where he is confronted by two outlaws who hold an old grudge against him.  One of his friends, a black man named Shanty, is burned out of his home by the Klu Klux Klan.  The state police and the judges, as well as most politicians are carpetbaggers, robbing normal folks of the their farms and possessions.  Comanches are raiding homes for scalps, horses, killing women and taking small children to raise as slaves or warriors.  This is the story of two men and their struggles to remain free among hard ruffians. 

I enjoy Westerns very much and Elmer Kelton is a master.  He is a six-time winner of the Spur Award, has earned four Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and was named the greatest Western author of all time by the Western Writers of America.  He has written more than forty books.

The Way of the Coyote was published in 2001 by Tom Doherty Associates. 

Note:  I didn't realize it at the time I checked this book out but it is the third book of a series, although it was still well read out of order.  The first book is called The Buckskin Line and the second is called Badger Boy.  I'm currently reading these and will review soon, so check back often.

If Only It Were True by Marc Levy

Lauren Kline is  a physician who, during her weekend vacation, gets into a car accident and goes into a deep coma.  Somehow, she has figured out how to astrally travel outside of her body, by power of thought.  She thinks where she wants to be and she puts herself there.  No one can see her or hear her while she's out of her body.  She decides to go back to her old apartment and discovers a man, Arthur, an architect, who has moved in.  She watches him for a while and soon Arthur is able to see her and feel her.  At first he doesn't believe her but when she convinces him to go to the hospital to see her body, he believes.  His friends think he's crazy, talking to himself, even acting like he's with someone who's not there.  The two soon become inseperable. 

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, the staff convinces Lauren's mother to remove the feeding tube that is keeping her alive.  When Lauren confides in Arthur that this is about to happen, he decides to kidnap her body in order to keep her "ghost" alive.  An investigator with the San Francisco Police soon tracks him down, recovers the body, but strangley, the policeman believes Arthur's story and agrees not to turn him in.  The body is returned to the hospital and the next day Lauren's ghost begins to fade.  They realize that the feeding tube has been removed and soon the ghost is gone and Arthur is left to mourn the death of his new best friend.  He grieves for a couple of weeks, staying in the house and not answering the telephone.  Little does he know, Lauren is still alive and breathing, even coming out of the coma back at the hospital. 

Now, I usually don't go in for romance novels, but this one struck a chord with me because of the supernatural flair which drew me in right away.  I'm glad I read this book. It is a page turner from chapter 1, a rich heartwarming story that I won't soon forget.  The book was copyrighted in 2000 and was an instant success.  Foreign rights have been sold in twenty-eight countries.