Ride the Jawbone

Montana author, Jim Moore, teaches many history lessons in his debut novel, Ride the Jawbone, which effectively transports the reader to central Montana's ranching communities and the famous Jawbone Railroad as they were experienced at the turn of the twentieth century. Into this story of a young lawyer, T. C. Bruce, who is asked to defend an odious outcast that the citizens want to hang, author Moore weaves details about the way of life of ranchers and other citizens of that era. Richard A. Harlow employed much persuasion to finance his Montana Railroad from where it linked with the Northern Pacific at Lombard to the Musselshell River Valley. Because of Harlow's ability to accomplish this task on the strength of his jawbone, people called it the Jawbone Railroad. In Jim Moore's novel, the body of a young woman is allegedly thrown from this train after the murder was committed. The accused is a reprehensible trapper whom no established attorney in Montana wants to defend. T. C. Bruce is the son of a rancher who owns a large spread an easy horseback ride away from Two Dot, Montana. T. C. loves ranching and is torn between his father's wish for him to take over the ranch and his mother's insistence that he put his education to use and practice law. When the judge asks him to take on the role of defense attorney in the Jawbone murder case, his father encourages him to do so. Two young women who take an interest in the handsome T. C. add complication to the story.