Winter Range (Large print, Paperback, Large type / large print edition)

Ike Parsons is the sheriff of a small Montana town, with a reputation for fairness, common sense, and kindness. When he hears that Chas Stubblefield has fallen on hard times in the bitter winter, he heads out to the rancher's spread to offer assistance. What Ike finds shocks him to his core: cattle starving in the snow or freezing where they stand, and a brooding Stubblefield near bankruptcy, living off the meat of his dying herd, too proud to accept help. Stubblefield is the heir of an old Montana family; Ike, a Wisconsin native, came west to marry the daughter of another rancher. As sheriff, Ike is something of an outsider, caught between one rancher's rights and the larger law of the community. His attempt to help backfires, and Ike is troubled to learn that Chas is gathering support in town among people who believe that a man's land and property are his to use as he chooses. But Ike does not know that the rancher is planning revenge, a plot that will target Ike's wife Pattiann--a woman with a past her husband does not fully understand, a past in which Chas Stubblefield figured intimately. An absolutely gripping novel, Winter Range portrays a town in crisis: a debut that is fast paced as a thriller, evocative of broad, spare places and changeable weather, and wise in the relations of men, women, and families.