The New Indians

by Joe Jessup

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There is a new war being waged in the New West. In places like Big Scratch, Montana, where everything environmental is seen as a threat to jobs and prosperity, land developers and oil and mining companies chop up big ranches, leaving behind a mountain of contamination that causes environmental groups to lock down public land. As hard lines are drawn in the sand, Sierra Club demonstrators are beaten and a girl is missing after a peaceful protest on national forest land.

Clyde Deerhide is an aging, half-Indian Lakota cowboy who has just returned home to Big Scratch with Fleebit Shepherd, his long-time cowboy partner who wants to retire and pursue his love interest, but is afraid of deserting Clyde. With tensions between residents and environmentalists at an all-time high, Clyde must now decide whether to cross a green line and forfeit old relationships from his past to protect the strangers. When the search for the missing girl is called off, Clyde embarks on a dangerous quest to find the girl that leads him to expose a killer and to embrace the love he has always desired.

In this gripping contemporary Western tale, two sides clash in opposition over a changing landscape as an aging cowboy attempts to find the place his grandfather once called the middle ground.

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288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 9, 2015