Hewey Calloway Series

Elmer Kelton, author of over a dozen popular westerns, was named the Greatest Western Writer of All Time by the Western Writers of America. He has won multiple Golden Spur Awards. The Smiling Country, filled with pathos and humor, is set in the last days of the Old West. Hewey Calloway may be pushing 45, but he can still rope and outride most things on four legs. Refusing promotions, he prefers to remain a simple ranch hand. But as he rides the west Texas plains, automobiles are beginning to dot the landscape. When Hewey is critically injured by a wild horse, he must admit that his world--and an age--are passing away.

Seven-time Spur Award winner Elmer Kelton sets this "completely absorbing" (Booklist) prequel to his award-winning classics The Good Old Boys and The Smiling Country in 1889 Texas. Hewey Calloway and his kid brother Walter head for West Texas- hoping to live their cowboy dream. But when Walter's crush on a gal threatens the dream, Hewey plots to get Walter back in the saddle again. ". related in a drawl that's sweet as pure honey."-Kirkus Reviews

Honored by seven Spur Awards and peer-selected as history's best Western writer, Elmer Kelton is the beloved author of a bevy of Texas tales, including his own revealing memoir Sandhills Boy. Set in 1906, The Good Old Boys is hailed as one of Kelton's finest works. Cowboy Hewey Calloway loves to ride the open range like a solitary sailor on an endless sea. So when barbed wire and newfangled contraptions threaten his world, he's dead-set against progress-until he meets a pretty little teacher.

Hewey Calloway and his brother Walter are young men looking for work. Their first job puts them in the middle of a territory war between two powerful ranchers, C.C. Tarpley and Eli Jessup. It's a tough trail for two green cowpunchers and the forks in that trail may lead the brothers in different directions.

Hewey Calloway is between a rock and a hard place: The open range and simple life of his childhood are disappearing. He can't live a cowboy life whose time has passed and he's not ready yet for the new challenges of the 20th century, like automobiles, telephones and barbed wire fences. He and his friends, all of them good old boys, must learn that even the best choices involve some kind of sacrifice.

Changes have come to 1910 Texas and Hewey Calloway doesn't like them. An injury signals the end of his freewheeling life and he begins to see the loneliness of the road ahead, if he doesn't take action to change his direction. Can his past hold the key to improving his future?