WELCOMES YOU.

David C. Noonan worked as an environmental engineering consultant for thirty-five years, taught graduate engineering classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northeastern University, and published more than three dozen technical journal articles before turning to creative writing. Thomas Nelson (now part of Harper Collins) published his first book, Aesop & the CEO: Powerful Business Lessons from Aesop’s Ancient Fables, which was translated into eleven languages.  His work has also been published in the New York Times Sunday magazine, Parents magazine, Roundup magazine, and Civil Engineer magazine. He is currently writing book reviews for the Western Writers of America, The Man from Misery is his first novel. He lives with Clare, his wife of more than forty-five years, in a suburb south of Boston. They have three grown children and three grandchildren. 

(Author photo courtesy of Kristy Dorfman)

Can intentionally killing a child ever be justified? In 1871, sharpshooter Emmet Honeycut is acquitted of murdering a 12-year old girl who was about to burn to death in a hotel fire. Emmet is free, but the mercy killing has made him a pariah in the town of Dixville. Jobless, penniless, friendless, Emmet faces a bleak future until he receives a telegram from Major Arthur Kingston, his former Confederate commander. Kingston's niece, Faith, has been abducted, and he's offering Emmet a huge payday to help him rescue the girl. Although weary of being a gun-for-hire vagabond, and longing to be a man of peace and place, Emmet joins Kingston's rescue party to fight one last battle.

The antagonists? Enrique Salazar and Yago Garza, two powerful cousins who mercilessly control the village of Santa Sabino. Their latest outrage is kidnapping teenage girls and auctioning them off as sex slaves to wealthy landowners. Complications abound: Salazar's estate is heavily guarded and will soon be bolstered by a unit of Mexican soldiers escorting the bidders. Mariana, a beautiful local woman, is assisting the rescue for her own ulterior reasons--and enchanting Emmet at the same time. And Salazar's initial infatuation with Faith deepens; he intends to marry her instead of selling her.

Questions rise up like gunsmoke: Can eight men and one woman outgun two-dozen vicious pistoleros and save Faith? Will Emmet's love for Mariana be reciprocated or is she merely using his deadeye for her own vengeful purposes? Should Emmet reveal the last dark secret he harbors if it means increasing the odds of a successful rescue--even though it jeopardizes his last chance for love and redemption?