Amazon Trail Hand, A Western Story Category:  Western Publisher: Five Star Publishing ISBN-10:  1594143900 Type: Fiction Pages: 225 Copyright: December 13, 2006 Owen Burke is a loner on the Tex Mex Border. Down on his luck he hires on as guide for a Mexican rancher who is driving a herd of horses north into the States. He grows to respect the family he works for, but incurs he wrath of the ranch's ramrod when his attention to the rancher's daughter turns serious. When the herd is later rustled by outlaws the Mexicans assume Burke, a gringo, must be responsible for leading them into a trap. In order to clear his name and win over the women he loves he must ride a desperate trail, trapped between a ruthless outlaw gang and a posse of angy vaqueros bent on his destruction.

Booklist review
A great Booklist review - congrats to R.W. Stone!
(will appear in the December 1st, 2006 issue)
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Stone, R. W. Trail Hand. Dec. 2006. 225p. Five Star, $25.95 (1-59414-390-0).

Owen Burke is an itinerant cowpoke scuffling by in south-of-the-border San Rafael when he learns of work at Enrique Allende’s horse ranch. He secures a job as a scout to lead a herd of horses to California. Before the drive begins, though, he earns the enmity of Chavez, the ranch ramrod, when Chavez sees him speaking with Allende’s daughter, Rosa Maria. Soon after the drive is underway—with Chavez and Burke’s feud simmering below the surface—rustlers make off with the herd. Chavez convinces the Allende crew it was an inside job, and Burke was the insider. In short order, Burke is convinced he must catch the rustlers and recover the herd before Chavez’s ad hoc posse catches him.

In his first published novel, Stone, a medical professional by trade, bursts onto the western scene with a suspenseful yarn replete with action, a chaste romance, and a very likable narrator in Burke. Western genre fiction is in need of some fresh voices. Stone and Burke fill the bill nicely. —Wes Lukowsky