Hacienda (Paperback)

It is the 1880s in the American Southwest. Into the lawless and isolated cowtown of Deadstop, a fief of Brodrick Franklin, a cattle baron to exemplify that legendary breed beyond redemption, comes a stranger: Pennsylvanian schoolteacher Margaret Kruger. By cold-hearted subterfuge the childless Brod Franklin coerces the German-Irish girl to enter into a liaison with him and give him a son for 20,000 dollars in gold -only to be hoist on his own petard when for the first time in his life he falls hopelessly in love, a love that is in no way reciprocated. All this while a criminal brother-in- law connives by murder and threat to win control of the mighty Franklin spread as a new spur of railroad inches its way towards town across the arid salt flats. There are battles aplenty -in the boudoir, the saloon, in the town and the prairie itself, until right is established and a new dynasty at Hacienda sets down its roots as at last civilization seeps into Deadstop.