Grass Kingdom (Barons) - Softcover

Sherman, Jory

3.89

9 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812520742 ISBN 13: 9780812520743

Publisher: Forge Books, 1995

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Matt Baron, the patriarch of a powerful clan, and his sister Lou, a tough cattle puncher, find their dream of a profitable Texas panhandle ranch threatened by oil drilling, drought, and marauding rustlers. Reprint.

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From Publishers Weekly:

Golden Spur Award-winner Sherman ( The Medicine Horn ) sets his sprawling rangeland epic on the mighty Baron ranch and lesser properties surrounding the West Texas town of Baronsville during Prohibition. When a group of rustlers led by Apache Jack Bone slaughter a prize bull and slit the throat of a young ranch hand in their rush to get purloined Baron cattle to their hideout in the untameable brasada , Matt Baron and his foreman Tom Casebolt ride into a storm to catch the criminals. Trouble is also brewing back in Baronsville: the son of a leading citizen robs a local payroll; the town's banker is being blackmailed by a rancher who wants to ruin her debt-ridden neighbors; bootleggers, Mexican-haters and the Ku Klux Klan threaten the ranchers' law-abiding ways. The relatively contemporary setting enlivens this traditional western, in which ambulances, police cars and radio broadcasts compete with buckboards, horses and stories 'round the campfire. Only a superabundance of characters (more than 140 spread over two generations) and a slightly disjointed plot line mar the fast-moving narrative spiced with salty dialogue; otherwise, it's a down-home Texas treat.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

The publisher says Lonesome Dove and Giant. Dallas and Bonanza are more like it. That's not all bad: this isn't timeless literature, but it's definitely entertaining in that miniseries kind of way--dozens of characters and a half dozen intertwining, melodramatic plots. Matt Baron, owner of the Baron Ranch in 1920s Texas, finds one of his hired hands, Jamey Dobbs, with his throat cut. Then one of Matt's prize stud bulls is castrated and mutilated. The incidents begin a series of events in which the Baron clan is pitted against some of its neighbors and into sometimes uneasy alliances with others. Among the other key characters are Baron's sister, Lou, who may be just a little tougher than her formidable brother; Ben Killian, who owns a rival ranch and is just as ambitious and loyal to his family as Matt and Lou are to the Barons; and, finally, Jake Bone, one of the more memorable villains in recent memory. Bone is a deadly mix of opportunist and sexual psychopath who is willing to kill and maim to achieve his goals or--even more chilling--set others at each other's throats to do his work for him. This is formulaic, middlebrow fiction, but it works. Wes Lukowsky

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