Books published by Summit Creek Press

Jake Lafarge and his mother were abandoned by his father in the Louisiana woods when Jake was just four years old. At the age of 17 Jake hired on with a hard-nosed Texas cattleman named Cyrus Ellsworth and headed north on a trail drive to Montana. Ellsworth becomes the father figure that Jake never had as they carve out a ranch in eastern Montana. The year is now 1886 and the open range, the old west is rapidly disappearing thanks to the thousands of homesteaders that have come and began plowing and fencing the range. Some of these people are not law abiding. When Ellsworth catches two of them stealing his cattle, he dishes out his own hard justice. Unfortunately for Jake, he is part of that day which sets in motion a calamity of events as Jake tries to make amends to the widow of one of the dead men. In the end his allegiance to his surrogate father will be severely tested.

Hard Times is the story of two people beginning a new life as homesteaders in eastern Montana during the year 1929. One of them, Phil Caldwell, is committed to this adventure, the other, his wife Martha, is not. Nonetheless, they go from their relatively comfortable city life to the desolation and loneliness of a one room shack far from civilization. The prospects of bettering themselves via this free government land that was to be theirs quickly fades. Life during these times was hard enough for the childless couple but subject their relationship to the unrelenting elements of the Montana plains and something was bound to give. And give it did sending Phil and Martha down a tumultuous path of uncertainty and danger.