Gripping stories of a last frontier

With tongue in cheek the author throws his rope and saddle in the back of a wagon and invites you along on a journey across the Great Plains of the Dust Bowl years of the 1930’s, the war years of the 1940’s, and the restless 1950’s, to experience great adventures, absurd comedy, and shocking dramas played out on a vast prairie stage. The drowning of a crippled boy at Horseshoe Lake, the hunt for a monster snake, a bull rider pronounced dead three different times in his life, the murder of a U.S. Marshal, and a disastrous summer storm are but a few that ensnare readers in a spellbinding grip. Riding the Red Beast West is a book about fear, hope, courage, loneliness, and disillusionment. Most of all it is a book about the land, a saga of place in the American landscape with a lovely and disturbing history that serves as reminder one’s past and place of birth leave an indelible stain on each of us.

Jack Rickard is the author of two poetry collections and the memoir Moonblindness and the Paleness of Dust. He has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the College of Emporia, Kansas for his accomplishments in literature, art, and education. His writing was a regular feature of the Reno County Kansas New Times in the 1990s.