The Hardness of Men
A novel. Italy, Texas, 1900.
The town slept easy. It never asked why.
Italy, Texas, 1900. Seventeen-year-old Will Reece has buried his father, a gentle preacher the whole county pitied, and come up the Katy to learn to be a different kind of man. His uncle Gus is the town marshal. Gus doesn't hold trials. He doesn't need to. When trouble comes to Italy, he rides out after dark, and by morning the trouble is gone and nobody asks where it went.
Then a widow in black steps off the train.
She is gracious, and grieving, and very good with figures, and before long the whole town has taken her in. Will can't stop watching her. With the biggest payday in the town's history coming down the line, he is about to find out what his uncle's kind of justice really costs, and who has been counting on it all along.
A literary western noir about fathers and sons, the stories towns tell about themselves, and the hardness we mistake for strength.
- Genre: Literary western / historical crime
- Setting: Italy, Texas, and Kansas City, 1900
- Length: about 78,000 words
- Formats: paperback and ebook (once published)
Danny Gentry, Ed.D., spent more than twenty-two years leading schools and is the author of The Collapse, The Serpent of Houston Creek and The Kindness Tree.