Homestake Lode

by G. Sam Carr and Sam G. Carr

It's 1878 in the wild American West, and people do what they can to make decent lives for themselves. Tuck Powells is a stoic Wells Fargo detective hired to protect a rich mine owner, George Hearst. Kelly Ryan is a spirited young actress headed West to make her fortune in the theater. Tuck and Kelly are thrown together during a tumultuous stagecoach ride from San Francisco to Deadwood, Wyoming. In Deadwood, Kelly discovers that her acting job is actually...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803495005
• ISBN13: 9780803495005
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Amazon Publishing
• Length: 185 Pages

Customer Reviews

A Good Read

If your idea of the "badlands" is places like Jalalabad, Islamabad and Feyzabad, you'll enjoy reading this book and getting in touch with the original American Badlands. The book is set in the Black Hills of South Dakota during the gold rush, when George Hearst was owner of the Homestake mine. Hearst is one of the characters, though unlike William Randolph Hearst in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, he is not the central character--yet he plays an important role. Author George Carr depicts the elder Hearst's actions and personality with historic accuracy. The central characters are a redhead who arrives in Deadwood having anwered an ad seeking actresses, only to find herself trapped in a house of ill repute, and a Clint-Eastwood-like detective for Wells Fargo who still mourns his murdered wife. The environment and turbulent times are rendered with such verisimilitude as to constitute a third character, as though the author knew them intimately. Indeed, the dust jacket tells us Mr. Carr spent his formative years in the area. The story is filled with complication and surprise, with some minor characters playing such vital parts as to win the reader's heart. The books's tone evokes Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, with a touch of Raymond Chandler and of a current writer for Harlequin, Barbara Bretton. The blend of adventure, danger and romance is just right. With characters speaking in their own authentic voices in the midst of historically-known events, the reader is transported and lives in that earlier time. I kept this book at my bedside and, for a night or two, lost sleep.

The Homestake Lode is a load of fun

G. Sam Carr's "Homestake Lode" is a lively western with a plot that moves along from crisis to crisis like a runaway six-horse team. Carr paints the beauty of the still wild American West through his fine descriptions and the reader becomes privy to the wheeling and dealing of mine owners, stake claimers and saloon keepers. Especially enjoyable is how Carr weaves historical characters, George Hearst for one, and Samuel Clemens for another, into the plot giving it a rich and lively sense of time and place in that undisciplined yet developing period of the late 19th century. The male/female love interest between the lively lass, Kelly Ryan, and Wells Fargo Detective Tuck Powells, is kept in a state of will-they-or-won't they, up to the last exciting page. Western lover or not, don't miss this one.

A Good Read

If your idea of the "badlands" is places like Jalalabad, Islamabad and Feyzabad, you'll enjoy reading this book and getting in touch with the original American Badlands. The book is set in the Black Hills of South Dakota during the gold-rush, when George Hearst was owner of the Homestake mine. Hearst is one of the characters, though unlike William Randolph Hearst in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, he is not the central character--yet he plays an important role. Author George Carr depicts George Hearst's actions and personality with historic accuracy. The central characters are a redhead who arrives in Deadwood having answered an ad seeking actresses, only to find herself trapped in a house of ill repute, and a Clint-Eastwood-like detective for Wells Fargo who still mourns his murdered wife. The environment and turbulent times are rendered with such verisimilitude as to constitute a third character, as though the author knew them intimately. Indeed, Mr. Carr spent his formative years in the area. The story is full of complication and surprise, with some minor characters playing such vital parts as to win the reader's heart. The book's tone evokes Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour, with a touch of Raymond Chandler and of a current writer for Harlequin, Barbara Bretton. The blend of adventure, danger and romance is just right. With characters speaking in their own authentic voices in the midst of historically-known events, the reader is transported and lives in that earlier time. I kept this book at my bedside and, for a few days, lost sleep.