With Blood in Their Eyes

With Blood in Their Eyes
By Thomas Cobb
224 pp. / 6.00 in x 9.00 in / 2012
Cloth (978-0-8165-2110-4)

Related Interest
- Western History
- Western Americana / Regional Interest
- Fiction

On February 10, 1918, John Power woke to the sound of bells and horses' hooves. He was sharing a cabin near the family mine with his brother Tom and their father Jeff; hired man Tom Sisson was also

Cobb can really write. He develops characters and describes action as well as anyone who's done it. Put this one on your list.

—Elmore Leonard, author of Raylan: A Novel

Authentically rich dialogue, fully-formed characters that one truly cares about, and a fascinating time in the formation of the west make this a marvelous novel. Tom Cobb is a man who knows and writes of the west and archetypal Americans like few others. A singular achievement.

—Scott Cooper, director of the film Crazy Heart

Cobb delivers again with a brilliantly conceived novel of the waning days of frontier Arizona. He knows the land and the people and he brings them vividly to life in this tale of crime, pursuit, and adventure where nothing is quite as it seems. It is, as they used to say, a page-turner.

—Paul Hutton, editor of Roundup!: Western Writers of America Presents Great Stories of the West from Today's Leading Western Writers

nearby. Then gunfire erupted, and so began the day when the Power brothers engaged the Graham County Sheriff's Department in the bloodiest shootout in Arizona history.

Now Thomas Cobb, author of Crazy Heart and Shavetail, has taken up the story in this powerful and meticulously researched nonfiction novel. What seems at first a simple tale of crime and pursuit takes on much greater meaning and complexity as the story traces the past lives of the main characters and interconnects them—all leading back to the deadly confrontation that begins the book. Cobb cunningly weaves the story of the Power brothers' escape with flashbacks of the boys' father's life and his struggle to make a living ranching, logging, and mining in the West around the turn of the century. Deftly drawn characters and cleverly concealed motivations work seamlessly to blend a compelling family history with a desperate story of the brothers as they attempt to escape.

Grappling with themes of loyalty, masculinity, technology, and honor, this sweeping saga reveals the passion and brutality of frontier life in Arizona a hundred years ago. Richly authentic and beautifully written, With Blood in Their Eyes breathes dramatic new life into this nearly forgotten episode of the American West.

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