Under Heaven’s Own Blue has the subtitle of Classic Stories of the American West. This collection consists of one short story and three novellas. It was published by Thorndike Press in November of 2024.

The first story, “Truth and Principle,” has as its narrator a character named Henry Tresh, who is the narrator and sleuth in “Return to Laurel,” a story that did well for me a few years ago. In this later story, which was published in an anthology by Five Star, Tresh undertakes to solve the mystery of the death of the son of an older woman who has some apprehensions but wants to know the truth. Along the way, Tresh meets the deceased’s ex-wife and subsequent paramour, and he sticks to principle in his dealings with them.

The second selection is “Double Deceit,” a novella that was included in a quartet of novellas by four different authors, published by Five Star. It is a story about my series character Dunbar, and it is narrated by a teenaged girl. I have a separate commentary on “Double Deceit” here, so I will not duplicate it. I think this is a pretty good story, and it did earn a small recognition as a finalist for the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for short fiction, so I am glad to have it in a collection of my own.

The third selection, “Bitter Range,” appears in this collection for the first time. It is about a ranch hand named Orin Blake, who becomes caught up in the mystery of two ranch owners who have been found dead. To complicate things, one of them had been carrying on with the other’s wife. In trying to find out who might be behind the murders, Orin meets a young woman who is being held against her will by a man who, with the help of his wife, has had a home for wayward girls and has taken advantage of them. Orin risks his life to rescue the girl, but he knows there will be no romantic benefit for him, as the girl will be bitter about her experiences for a while to come.

The fourth selection, “Shadow of the Butte,” also appears here for the first time. It has as its protagonist a middle-aged man named Vance Luverne, who comes to Hull Butte to take over the property of his deceased uncle. Before long, he learns of the deaths of a cattleman and of a farmer, who have been rivals for the interest of a widow in town and who also wanted to buy the same piece of property. On his way to learning about what happened to these two men, Vance hears the story of the county clerk, who had an ill-fated romance with a schoolteacher who disappeared. These strands come together, of course.

All of these stories are in the crossover mode of western/mystery, with a good sense of place. For “Bitter Range,” I went on a field trip in Goshen Hole, not far from where I live, which has some nice landscape features that lend themselves to the kind of hole or box canyon where the perpetrator keeps his young women captive. For “Shadow of the Butte,” I took a two-day field trip to the Pumpkin Buttes, several hours north of where I live. My notations helped me created a workable setting for this story. As with some of my other work in recent years, I was glad to be able to work in fiction of middle length. The three novellas here are in the 20,000-word range, which I think is a good length in itself. I was glad to be able to have these four works appear together in a single volume.

Under Heaven’s Own Blue is available at Amazon.

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