Riders of the Suwannee: A Cracker Western

by Lee Gramling

Cracker Westerns are rip-roarin, action-packed, can't-put-'em-down tales set in the frontier days of Florida. They are full of adventure, real heroes, and vivid, authentic details that bring Florida's history to life. Tate Barkley returns to 1870s Florida after ten years on the Western frontier. He's the kind of man trouble just naturally seems to find, and to tell the truth, he's gotten sort of used to it by now. But Big Bill Caton and his three dozen renegades are more trouble than Tate figured on. Before his run-in with the Caton bunch, he'd halfway thought about settling down in the Florida Panhandle where he grew up. Now it seems like a better idea just to keep on riding. That is, until Tate meets Eileen McClanahan, a widow with a couple of kids, who is trying to hold on to her place on the Florida Gulf coast. She's more than Tate figured on too. With a temper and a stubborn streak that would put a mule to shame, she's not about to back down from Big Bill Caton or anybody else. Tate's a rough man—a man with a bark on, as they say—but it isn't in him to let a woman face that kind of crowd alone. He's a fighter by trade as well as by inclination, and he decides he'd just better stick around and see this fight through to the finish. Whose finish it'll be, though, is something Tate would rather not think about right at the moment. > See all of the books in this series

Genres: Westerns, Fiction

295 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1993

Reviews

[Anne Vandenbrink · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not often that I rate a book as truly amazing, but this one was. Loved the story. After spending time out west, a native Floridian returns home and has a run-in with an outlaw gang. Set near the Northern Gulf coast, he also finds a young widow that needs help defending her home. Loved it.

[Amy Humphries · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book! Of course half the fun was that I got it for $.50 at the used book store, grabbing it after reading that it was from a 5th generation Floridian. This was like a Florida version of a western, and I really enjoyed it. Felt like I learned a lot about old florida, but also liked the little tidbits that felt like they were written just for someone born and raised in Florida to pick up on. To top it off the whole story takes place in north/west Florida right near our river house so it felt even more special in that way since I could picture all the areas the author was describing exactly.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best Western I have read in a long time, and the first in the subgenre of Cracker Westerns. Out of curiosity, I picked up this book, not knowing if it would live up to the standards of great Westerns, or that I would like it.