Amazon My Articles and Books Category:  Historical Fiction Publisher: American Book Publishing ISBN-10:  1589823761 Type: Fiction Pages: 261 Copyright: 2006 Amos Jakey is the story of a very young boy who loses his family and is taken to live on a ranch in the Texas Border town of Eagle Pass, Texas. Many adventures make his life exciting in his travels to Texas and from there on to California and back to where he started in Arkansas. Amos Jakey is a book for all audiences.  You will travel along with a young orphan who is traken from the only home he knows by an old Mexican migrant worker who becomes his self-appointed caregiver and protector.  They travel by wagon from Northeast Arkansas to the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas.  Here Amos grows into a man and learns the trade of rounding up and breaking wild horses.  From here Amos moves on to California to find his uncle Frank and fate has many more adventures to lay at his door before he reaches his destination. Amos Jakey has a follow up sequel that you won't want to miss.  Nicolina is finally out in print and both books can be purchased directly though links on my website. Excerpt 'He woke from a dream of bloodcurdling screams and Pa rushing back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom with pails of hot water and blood-covered rags. But knowing that Pa was here, he felt safe and fell back to sleep.'

Amos Jakey--review by Chuck Lunsford
In her little gem of a novel Amos Jakey, Sandra Graham has given us a wonderful look into life in the first half of the 20th century. Through the eyes of the orphaned Amos, she puts the reader alongside him through his terrible boyhood tragedies and his travels and adventures as he grows into a fine strong young man—but a man always seeking to belong to someone, somewhere. Sandra writes poignantly from first-hand knowledge and has served up a rich mixture of colorful characters whom Amos encounters along the way. The chance meeting with the man who takes him in and becomes a father figure, the Mexican family Amos attaches to in his quest— the women who mother him and the men who help to shape him into a working cowboy and skilled horse wrangler, and of course, the girls he loves and who love him. His only possession is a little box of treasures he keeps under his bed, reminding him of the poverty and back-breaking labor of the cotton fields of Arkansas, a Texas border town and frightening encounters with Mexican bandits. A grown man now, a lost love forces him to leave the family that raised him in Texas, and he encounters the greed and deceit of upscale racehorse breeders in New Mexico. Amos moves on again, all the way to the shores of the Pacific where he becomes a beachcomber to help a young lady in need and who becomes his foster-daughter, and where he finally finds a remnant of family after almost 40 years. But an older Amos finds the urge to go “home” is strong and when he finally gets back to his roots in Arkansas, the reader is treated to an ending twist that will bring a smile— and which will also bring disappointment that this story has to have an ending. Amos Jakey is a great read and hopefully, Ms. Graham has a sequel in the works.

Charles L. Lunsford
Author of Departure Message & Boxcar Down: The Albanian Incident


Amos Jakey--review by Dale Clearley

Amos Jakey
by Sandra E. Graham

Sandra Graham has woven the classic orphan adventure tale made it seem as if it was an everyman’s tale. In reading this novel I began to think through stories in my own family that had as many stops and starts and twists as that of Amos Jakey. These are the stories we’d hear at our great aunts’ knees.

Amos Jakey was an ill fated child who lost his mother at eight years old when she gave birth to his younger sister. A very short while later Amos lost his father to the grief of being without his life’s mate. The plot here takes very unusual twist Amos Jakey was found by some Mexican laborers, one of whom, Mequidez – affectionately known as “Mel” took Amos under his wing and brought him to a new life in Eagle Pass, Southwestern Texas.

It was here under the tutelage of Luis Perez and is wife Vikki, the owners of the ranch that Mel had brought Amos Jakey that the little cowboy learned his horsemanship, a trade that would become his life’s love. Amos was to grow up spending his formative years on this ranch and have many great adventures there, from wild horse round ups to capturing a murderous outlaw who was working on the ranch and going alone on a rescue mission when one of Luis’s daughters, Cheyenne, was abducted and taken deep into Mexico. But as Amos matured and finally realized that he loved Cheyenne as she said she loved Amos, he’d learn his first lesson in heartbreaks. Her heart would be stolen by another ranch hand, Amos’s number two. This caused Amos Jakey to leave the only home he knew in the night.

When he left Amos’s intended destination was Bakersfield, California, where he believed his father’s favorite brother Frank had been destined. But as it happens, fate stepped in and Amos found himself working on a thoroughbred ranch in New Mexico, beguiled by the owners’ daughter and again taken under the wing of Mr. Graham, Amos Jakey’s new employer and teacher. But this arrangement led to a long-term ill begotten engagement with Mr. Graham’s daughter that ended in death for two people almost had a treacherous ending for Amos himself.

Thus Amos continued his trek towards Bakersfield, but this time winding up in San Diego, taking a watchman’s job at a beachside hotel and befriending a young girl with an entrepreneurial spirit and her grandmother. When the young girl’s grandmother suddenly died leaving this child with no known relatives, Amos and the hotel owner stepped in and claimed the child as family – making Amos himself the guardian of the girl. Of course, this new familial responsibility caused Amos Jakey to grow roots, however shallow, in San Diego until the child grew into a woman an married a young lawyer. In Amos’s early San Diego years he had befriended a local rancher who allowed Amos to ride his horses whenever he liked. And through his horseback riding on the beach Amos met a young woman who changed his life forever…

And no, there is not a romantic twist here as I just made it sound. But to go any further in this part of the story, which leads to Amos’s return to Arkansas after thirty-eight years, would be unfair and give away the power of Sandra Graham’s ending. You will need to read it yourself.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed Amos Jakey and I can think of lots of other folks back home who would too. This is a story of the common man – a story I believe we all can relate to. It is a story that could have happened in your own family. And speaking of family, I am going to send some of my family members a few copies of Sandra Graham’s book!


Review written by, Gary Dale Cearley, author, rese