West of Washoe: A Western Story [Large Print]

by Tim Champlin

Book Overview

A thrilling chase ensues as a stagecoach driver and passengers try to avoid armed robbers on a treacherously narrow and winding road. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Large Print: Yes
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1410418650
• ISBN13: 9781410418654
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Thorndike Press
• Length: 323 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Fool's Gold; Gold's Fool

A quick precis of Tim champlin's book "West of Washoe" might be: "Greed clones itself and is never satisfied." In this story, three of Virginia City's richest citizens set out to enrich themselves even further by salting a worthless mine and taking over the stage coach company that ships the gold and silver to the mints in San Francisco a.k.a. "down below". The avid historical fiction reader will be delighted with this novel because it illuminates a time and place not well known, a pre-civil war mining town. To call Virginia City a mining town is gross understatement. Virginia City was in fact a King Midis treasure trove that could and sometimes did break the bank, occasionally even most of the banks. It's clear, too, that the book was painstakingly researched -- and you'll marvel at the people such as Mark Twain that you know in this book. It takes special courage for an author to include well-known people in his or her work because readers are ruthless when they spot a flaw. Tim Champlin doesn't take chances. He knows his setting and characters like the back of his hand. As the story opens, protagonist Gil Ross is aboard a stagecoach headed for Virginia City to inspect the mines and surrounding geography for present and future yields. That stage is targeted as one of the many hold-ups engineered by the villains who want to break the Overland Stage Company with insurance claims for missing shipments. Awakened from a sound sleep inside the coach, Gil Ross immediately springs into action with his Navy Colt dispatching the would be outlaws with a hail of bullets and saving the day, the coach's cargo, and the other passengers. That, however, is just the first chapter ... yesterday's villains were not that easy to scare off and this book sees us through many other attempts at their going for the gold. Tim Champlin's one of our generation's most extraordinary writers. "West of Washoe" is a fast-paced novel, full of action, gun battles, fist fights, and struggles to escape death far below the surface in a mine. We hear a great deal these days about character-driven plots. That quality seems to be a particular forte of Tim Champlin, his characters are complex and well-developed, carrying the plot to logical conclusion. "West of Washoe" is a must read for western readers as well as for those who enjoy American historical fiction.