Ten Mile Valley: A Western Story

By Wayne D. Overholser

The tale of an orphan boy who is forced to become a man from the three-time Spur Award–winning author whose “knowledge of western lore is unsurpassed” (Historical Novel Society).

Mark Kelton is eighteen years old—part boy, part man. On the trail to set up a ranch in eastern Oregon, his parents are killed by an unknown assailant and their strongbox containing $8,000 is stolen.

Mark heads out onto the empty plain where he encounters Bronco Curtis, a man who knows what he wants, and Curtis befriends the young orphan. When Curtis was Mark’s age, an older man had done the same for him. Under Curtis’s tutelage, Mark becomes a hardened rider and an experienced cowboy, capable in the use of firearms. In Ten Mile Valley, Curtis purchases a small cattle ranch and appoints Mark as his partner, even though Mark is destitute.

Even so, always at the back of Mark’s mind is the knowledge that, somewhere on the plains, the murderer of his parents still rides free. Mark is convinced that he cannot truly become a man until he finds that murdering thief.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781634507486

Wayne D. Overholser

Wayne D. Overholser (1906–1996) was an American Western writer from Pomeroy, Washington. He won the 1953 Spur Award for Best Novel for Lawman, written under the pseudonym Lee Leighton, and the 1954 Spur Award for The Violent Land.