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Book Summary and Reviews of Glorious by Jeff Guinn

Glorious by Jeff Guinn

Glorious

A Novel of the American West

by Jeff Guinn

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • May 2014, 416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

We've all got mistakes in our past we'd rather forget.

Cash McLendon has always had an instinct for self-preservation, one that was honed by an impoverished childhood and life with an alcoholic father barely scraping by on the streets of Saint Louis in 1872. He's always had a knack for finding and capitalizing on the slightest opportunities, choosing the path of financial security over happiness or real friends. He eventually builds himself up from a Saint Louis street urchin to the son-in-law and heir apparent to industrial mogul Rupert Douglass. Though it lacks passion, his life seems securely set: a wife, a career, property, standing.

But when tragedy strikes, all of his plans and his entire future dissolve in an instant. McLendon's instinct for survival kicks in; he flees Saint Louis, and Douglas assigns his enforcer, an ominous skull-cracker with steel-toed boots, to track him down.

With nothing to lose, McLendon attempts to reconcile with an old flame - a woman he was nearly engaged to but put aside in exchange for the life now in shambles. He heard through the grapevine that she and her father moved their dry-goods store out west, to a speck-on-the-map mining town named Glorious, in the Arizona Territory. There, McLendon tries to win her back, and in the process discovers a new way of life at the edge of the final American frontier. But he can't outrun his past forever...

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Delightful...Wonderfully appealing. Glorious is an old fashioned western with likable characters who, because Gunn projects a trilogy, will return shortly." - Booklist

"This first installment in a trilogy will delight historical fiction fans longing for the return of classic Westerns. This entertaining outing is sure to keep the saloon doors swinging for more entries in the genre." - Library Journal

"The Wild West comes alive in this novel of prospectors, desolate cavalry posts, rotgut saloons and Apache raiders.... The plot is classic...Good fun." - Kirkus

"A trip to Glorious, Arizona, in Jeff Guinn's new western novel is like a cool draft beer after a long, hot day on a dusty trail. Glorious is old-fashioned in the very best way: It's good-hearted, optimistic, compelling, comfortable, and extremely well-told. It's wonderful when an author clearly has affection for his characters, and readers will feel the same way." - C. J. Box, New York Times–bestselling author of The Highway and Stone Cold

"If, like me, you've been waiting for the next Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey, the good news is his name is Jeff Guinn. His newest novel, Glorious, has all the elements of a fabulous western: compelling characters, breath-taking scenery, and something more - an unblinking take on the western frontier." - Craig Johnson, New York Times–bestselling author of the Walt Longmire mysteries, the basis of A&E's hit series Longmire

This information about Glorious was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Jeff Guinn

Jeff Guinn is the bestselling author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including Manson, The Last Gunfight, and Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde.  The former books editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and award-winning investigative journalist, he is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He lives in Fort Worth.

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