Arizona in the early twentieth century had more than its share of violent and lawless men who wreaked havoc as they roamed the Arizona Territory. The Arizona Rangers, a small company of tough men, were formed to deal with this criminal element.
The book had already earned strong reviews from Foreword Clarion, Kirkus, and BlueInk Review. Izzard Ink stepped in to give it the professional relaunch it deserved—refining the metadata and positioning, rebuilding the cover and interior in InDesign, and creating a clean eBook edition—so the book’s design and distribution finally matched the strength of J. Reeder Archuleta’s story.
Arizona Territory, 1908. Statehood is coming, the telephones are ringing in ranger headquarters, and men in offices think the frontier is finished. On the ground, Arizona Ranger Owen P. Jones knows better.
Escorting a condemned rustler to Yuma, Jones hears a final confession: a rancher’s wife and young daughter were taken across the line into Mexico, raped, murdered, and buried in a hidden grave along the Rio Sonora. Their killers—an Apache–Mexican gunman known as the Breed, a sadistic drifter named Mitchell, and their crew—rode on under the quiet command of a man called Spence, a brilliant swindler who robs railroads and foreign mining companies with ledgers, bonds, and payroll schemes as efficiently as any gun.
On the riverbank where the MacDuff women lie, Jones makes a private vow: he will find every man who had a hand in the crime—those who watched as well as those who struck—and see that none of them escape justice, badge or no badge, on either side of the border.
The hunt pulls him into an uneasy alliance with Mexico’s rurales, into the marble banks and back rooms of Hermosillo, and into the orbit of Catalina Gallegos de San Martin, a widowed rancher whose land and loyalties straddle old Mexico and the new century. As politicians in Phoenix move to abolish the Rangers entirely, Jones is forced to choose between the law he serves and the promise that now defines him.
Sweeping from New Orleans orphanages to Yuma Prison, from Sonoran canyons to the birth of modern corporate power in the West, Rio Sonora is a taut, deeply human Western about the last days of the ranger era—and a man who refuses to let time, or progress, bury the dead.
Category: Fiction
Release date: June 30, 2022
Page size: 5.5″ x 8.5″
Word count: 70,577
Estimated page count: 242
J. Reeder Archuleta was raised in Texas close to the Mexican Border, and five generations of his family are in their final resting place there. His great-grandfather is buried in Concordia Cemetery in El Paso, Texas, within spitting distance of the grave of John Wesley Hardin.
Archuleta has authored three books: Rio Sonora: A Story of the Arizona Rangers, The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories, and The Best Good Horse.
Archuleta’s utterly captivating turn-of-the-century western centers on Owen Jones, a consummate lawman who’s among the last of a dying breed.
A well-rendered historical novel that thrives in its descriptions of the old American Southwest.
This is a fantastic adventure featuring heroes on horseback, shoot-outs, and dastardly villains itching for a showdown.
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