Summer’s Lease is my thirty-fourth western/frontier novel. I wrote it in the fall of 2022 and finished it right after New Year 2023. It was published in June 2024 as a large print original (first edition) by Thorndike Press.

In Summer’s Lease, I tried to do something a little different from my other novels in this line. I had been working with an idea about a character who leaves his work as a professor and comes for a stay in the West. I drew up an idea of my character, Lawrence Orme, and had him come to rent a place called The Lodge in the plains country of Wyoming. As the reader finds out in the course of the story, Lawrence left his work because he became a member of what he thought was an intellectual organization dedicated to the pursuit of ideas and the improvement of society. However, he found out that the organization pursued the ideals of eugenics and may have taken some liberties with some human subjects, and when he wanted to distance himself from the organization, he was met with threats and hostility. He decided not to endanger his status in his profession, so he took leave.

Not long after Lawrence comes to the town of Ringbone and settles into The Lodge, he meets a group of riders from a neighboring ranch. He knows that he will need more money sooner or later, and he is not above menial work, so he goes to work as a kitchen helper at the ranch. Once there, however, he incurs the displeasure of the foreman and the owner, and after he is fired, he comes home to find a dead man on his doorstep.

Lawrence is drawn into the mystery of this killing and a couple of others. He is also drawn into a bit of romantic interest with the ranch owner’s mistress,  who would like to get out of her situation, and with the sister of a homesteader who wants to get into local politics. Perhaps with some irony about genetics, Lawrence finds himself trying to learn the truth about the parentage of the dead man on his doorstep and of a brute who rides for the neighboring ranch. Like a good amateur sleuth, he gets knocked down, beat up, and kicked around.

As preparation for writing this novel, I read a combination of works including The Portrait of a Lady, Candide, The Go-Between, To Kill a Mockingbird, and News of the World, plus a couple of genre westerns. I watched a few genre western and noir movies as well as some classic masterpieces such as The Go-Between, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Vikings, Titanic, Doctor Zhivago, and Gone With the Wind. I had seen most of these at least once before, but I wanted to see them with my current focus of getting a sense of what makes a work good.

I do not think it is a mistake to try, in a deliberate sort of way, to write something good, but it might be a mistake to disclose that intention. As with other works I have written, I tried to write a story that mattered, a story about an average citizen who is able to help find the truth about wrongs in a frontier setting. I cannot demand that others see that it is good or that it matters, but I hope that this work meets with some success. Meanwhile, I express my thanks to the people at Thorndike Press for giving it a chance.

Summer’s Lease is available at Amazon.

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