Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

    Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

     When Moss Tucker smelled danger he shot it. When he needed shelter he grabbed it. And when he wanted a woman's touch he bought it. But then he saw Amanda Boone's sparkling azure eyes—an innocent beauty like her would never get involved with a lawbreaking man like him. Chestnut-haired Amanda tried to keep her gaze on the vast frontier that flashed past her train window—but it kept straying to the buckskin-clad stranger. Every inch of him was virile and strong. She knew it was wrong to even think of his muscular arms crushing her soft curves in a fierce embrace. Yet she vowed that before the trip was through he would be the one to tame her savage desire with his wild and lawless love. "Bittner's characters spring to life...extraordinary for the depth of emotion with which they are portrayed."—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "Time after time, Rosanne Bittner brings a full-blown portrait of the untamed West to readers. Her tapestry is woven with authenticity, colorful characters, intense emotions and love's power over every conceivable obstacle."—RT

    While he was away at the War, his parents had their land stolen by the railroad, and they died in poverty. After that, Swede went bad. John Kirby was Swede's boyhood friend, now he's a Texas Ranger famous for bringing his men in dead. He's vowed to put an end to Swede's depredations. He also married the girl Swede loved. When Swede robs the bank is Temperance, Kirby leads the posse after him. In his flight, Swede encounters a girl named Rosie, a prostitute, the only survivor of an Indian raid. If Swede leaves her, she'll die, so he takes her with him, even though that means the posse will catch him . . .

    On a remote cattle ranch in a peaceful Wyoming valley, in the hushed villages of beleaguered Indian tribes, among the government troops advancing through the bitter winter landscape, the time of the Snowblind Moon heralds the beginning of an apocalyptic clash between the Indians and the whites.And caught up in the tragedy are the men and women of the West, passionately committed to peace, seemingly helpless to prevent tragedy: Chris Hardeman, former army scout haunted by his part in an Indian massacre; Lisa Putnam, young, independent owner of a ranch; Bat Putman, legendary mountain man; Johnny Smoker, a white boy, raised by the Cheyenne; Amanda Spencer, a circus performer who falls in love with Johnny; and Sun Horse, a Sioux chieftan struggling to reconcile peace with freedom and dignity.

    By that time they and everyone else who had been at the scene of Custer's defeat were part of legend. Captain Frederick W. Benteen of the Seventh Cavalry made history on June 25 and 26, 1876, when he came to the rescue of Major Marcus A. Reno's command. Private Theodore W. Goldin was with Reno during the battle and later helped to bury Custer and his comrades. Benteen and Goldin had retired from the army when their correspondence--rare for being between an officer and an enlisted man--began. Benteen's letters, collected by John M. Carroll, are an exciting record of the Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Sioux War with tantalizing (and sometimes malicious) views of Custer and his wife, Libby; Reno; Generals Miles and Terry; and others. Goldin's replies to Benteen are lost, but Carroll has supplied revealing letters from him to the historians E. A. Brininstool and Fred Dustin touching on the same events. Also included are two accounts of the Battle of the Little Big Horn by Benteen, discovered after his death in 1898. The Benteen-Goldin Letters on Custer and His Last Battle, published in a limited edition in 1974 and edited and introduced by Carroll, is an important primary source for anyone interested in Custer.

    Randall Kerry, a young member of the Mellette Expedition, returns to camp only to find all seventeen men slaughtered and an Indian war party on his trail.