Rawlins, No Longer Young

Award-winning author Rick DeStefanis brings his storytelling talents to readers with this exciting historical fiction western set against the backdrop of the Civil War and the American West. When young Tennessean Virgil Rawlins finds his best friend, Tom Saunders, hanging dead from a sycamore tree, he little realizes he is about to be swept into the maelstrom of the American Civil War. Lost in a world of brutality and inhumanity, the teenaged Rawlins matures but finds he is driven only by revenge and hatred. Heading westward before the war’s end, Rawlins makes his way to the town of Independence and the Oregon Trail, but along the way he meets the remarkably beautiful Sarah McCaskey and learns that the rights and wrongs in his life cannot be defined simply as blue and gray. When Sarah tells Rawlins of her loss to Confederate guerrilla Bloody Bill Anderson, Rawlins begins to question his own assumptions. Joining a wagon train as a hunter/scout, he heads westward into the raging Indian War of 1865. Along the way he earns a reputation as a well-respected fighter, and he must finally decide what kind of man he will be—outlaw, lawman, or perhaps, neither. Rawlins, No Longer Young is guaranteed to stir debate and enlighten readers with the experiences of these turbulent years as seen through the eyes of a young Confederate soldier.