In the 1978 novel, The Good Old Boys, Hewey Calloway is a 
"fiddle-footed" cowboy, roaming from job to job and facing an 
uncertain future as he grows older. His brother, Walter, married 
and settled down to hard-scrabble farming, wants Huey to do the 
same. Eve, Walter's wife, clearly disapproves of Hewey and fears 
his influence on her two sons, who idolize their uncle. Snort 
Yarnell, another cowboy, wants Hewey to join him in driving 
horses to Southwest Texas, work in Mexico, and live free. And 
then there's Spring Renfro, who loves Hewey and wants a home of 
her own. In the end, even for Spring, Hewey can't bring himself to 
abandon the free life. Actor/director Tommy Lee Jones made a 
memorable TV movie from the book.

    Twenty years later, in this sequel, Elmer Kelton brought Hewey 
back, older, wiser, and badly banged up trying to break a renegade 
bronc. His wandering days are over because of his injuries, 
because of fences that cut up the range, because of trucks and 
automobiles. But how will Hewey handle the new circumstances 
of his life? And how will Spring react to his return? Readers who 
fell in love with Hewey will delight in seeing him back and 
following his new and different adventures.

_________________________________________________________

ELMER KELTON is the author of over forty novels, published over 
the last fifty years, all dealing with Texas and the West.

His best-known books include The Time It Never Rained, about 
the drought of the 1950s, The Day the Cowboys Quit, about the 
1883 cowboy strike at Tascosa, Texas, The Man Who Rode 
Midnight, about an old rancher fighting creeping development around 
his ranch and remembering the time he rode the famous bucking 
bronc Midnight, and The Wolf and the Buffalo, which contrasts a 
Comanche chief, whose world is falling apart, and a "buffalo" or 
African-American soldier, a former slave who sees opportunity ahead 
for the first time. Kelton has written about the span of Texas history 
from the Alamo to the late twentieth century, always with a firm hand 
on historical accuracy, character development, and the inevitability 
of change.

Kelton has won the Western Writers of America Spur Award six 
times and the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the 
National Cowboy Hall of Fame four times. Western Writers of 
America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Western Literature 
Association have honored him for lifetime achievement.

Number Thirty-eight: The Texas Tradition Series


What people are saying about this book

"This is a hallmark of any Kelton novel. His research is thorough 
and his feel for the time and place is remarkable."—Fort Worth 
Star-Telegram