A Civil War vet goes looking for his brother, only to find him dead under suspicious circumstances and his widow (and her farm) under siege in Lee Hoffman's West of Cheyenne.
I picked this up from a Little Free Library in Angola, Indiana to read on a camping trip and was genuinely surprised by the novel.
The plot is somewhat of a standard oater, with a quickly-resolved ending, but the protagonist is especially finely shaded for a western written in the late 60s. He's a troubled, emotionally scarred person obviously suffering from what we would now call PTSD, and it makes for a more well-rounded story.
I was also surprised to find that Lee Hoffman was really Shirley Hoffman, a well-known figure in science fiction fandom who wrote westerns, sci-fi, and romances (as Georgia York). She edited her own magazines dedicated to sci-fi and also folk music.
West of Cheyenne was a cut above the standard western and recommended for those who haven't tried Hoffman's writing. I'm going hunting for more.
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