Elmer Kelton

A Texas rancher reveals his determination and endurance as he battles a drought that has lasted six years

The Time It Never Rained

The conflict between the Eastern investor and the Yankee character results in the 1883 West Texas cowboy strike

The Day the Cowboys Quit

The Way of the Coyote (Texas Rangers)

Ranger's Trail (Texas Rangers)

On the Texas frontier in the 1840s, a red-haired child whose family has been massacred is captured by a Comanche war party led by a great warrior named Buffalo Caller. The boy is rescued by Mike Shannon, a Mexican War veteran riding with a "ranging company" of Texans dedicated to protecting settlers against Indian raids, and is adopted by the Shannon family. In 1861 his adoptive father is bushwhacked and murdered and the boy--now known as Rusty Shannon--follows Mike's footsteps, riding to Fort Belknap to join the Rangers. Texas is now in the throes of secession and Union sympathizers are treated as traitors. One such "traitor" is Lon Monahan, whose family befriends Rusty. Lon Monahan's particular enemy is Colonel Caleb Dawkins, a former army officer and Confederate zealot determined to conscript the Monahan boys and drive Lon and all Unionists out of Texas. When the youngest Monahan attempts to escape Texas and wait out the war, Dawkins's thugs hang him and his father. Rusty Shannon carries heavy burdens. Both of his families are dead; he is haunted by Mike Shannon's murder, thinks he knows the culprit and intends to kill the man; his new-found friends have been lynched; and his duties as a Ranger conflict with his sense of justice. And he is fated to meet again the Comanche warrior whose band killed his family and took him captive over two decades ago: Buffalo Caller.

The Buckskin Line

Badger Boy (Texas Rangers)

A Hewey Calloway Novel

The Good Old Boys

Elmer Kelton Tells the Truth (4 CDs)

Other men's horses

Hard trail to follow

Jericho's Road (Texas Rangers)

Texas Vendetta (Texas Rangers)

Massacre At Goliad (Buckalew Family)

Sons of Texas

The Rebels

Sons of Texas (Sons of Texas Series)

The Raiders

The Pumpkin Rollers

Wes Hendricks begins a one-man war against his family, friends, and the harsh realities of time to hold on to the land he loves.

The man who rode midnight

To the ranchers and farmers of 1950s Texas, man's biggest enemy is one he can't control. With their entire livelihood pegged on the chance of a wet year or a dry year, drought has the ability to crush their whole enterprise. To Charlie Flagg, an honest, decent, and cantankerous rancher, the drought of the early 1950s is a foe that he must fight on his own grounds. Refusing the questionable "help" of federal aid programs, Charlie and his family struggle to make the ranch survive until the time it rains again-if it ever rains again.

The Time it Never Rained

Repub. of Doubleday 1973 edition, with new introductions by Kelton and an afterword.

Elmer Kelton

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