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The Paul Lee McWhorter Western Life Series Based
on Big Ed Simpson, the half-Indian chief of police who raised me as his own daughter; breathing air into my lungs when I was
stillborn and giving me life. Paul Lee is a sixty-four year old lawman surfeit with violence and its terrible cost, living
a life based on resolve, respect, results, resolution, restoration, and self-reliance as the Old West settles
and the Nation bitterly divided against itself attempts to pull the raged edges of war together to allow the wound to mend.
Born in a past deeply rooted in the American War for Independence, raised with an upper class, classical education of Ole
Virginia aristocracy, Paul Lee McWhorter is accompanied by a continuing cast of characters with varying life styles reflecting
the hegemony of a growing Nation of emigrants. Luke Cole, the brash, twenty-something free spirit who served him as a lawman
before and after the War, twelve-year old Becka’ Fosse, the orphaned daughter of his best friend and Mentor after Rolfe
Fosse` was killed by a deranged rancher after the passion of Othello, and a young Mexican orphan of indeterminate age who
stumbled into their camp one night, more dead than alive after witnessing his parent’s murder at the hand of other Comancheros.
Under the guidance of a U.S. Circuit chief Justice in Carson City, Judge Willard Orville, Paul McWhorter goes where the trouble
is and helps to support, defend, and protect those who are unable to defend themselves against the determination and greed
of unscrupulous men out to use the very rawness of the developing Territories for their own ends. The views and prejudices
of the day are shown without reservation to help us better appreciate the diversity and cultural heritage which grew out of
those turbulent times but the deepest intent of these richly textured vignettes is a respect for all peoples, tribes and tongues
who formed us into the America we stand today. I’m not a politician, I’m a writer, but the dream I learned at
Big Ed’s side in the Nineteen Fifties has become the reality I strive for now. Please join your voice to mine as we
move through their future into our children’s.
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A Federal Marshall takes his family with him on his travels in the years following the American Civil War,
loaning his strength to small ranchers and farmers unable to defend themselves against the men who would use the rawness of
the now-States and Territories to their own advantage. These earthy, down home books are about Justice on behalf of the ordinary
citizen rather than taking down the bad guys by force.
Sixty-three year old Paul Lee McWhorter returns to his father's
plantation for the first time in thirty years, joined by the young law man Luke Cole, who served with him as a US Marshall
in Nevada. Newly released from a horrific experience in a pow death camp, he expects to find the peace at last to settle down.
But instead, he is driven back out West by the ghosts he carries with him. His Young Ward catches up with him in Carson City
Nevada, and he resumes the life he had prior to his decision to fight for the honor of the South, seeing that she was losing
the War only in lack of numbers, but he finds an aversion to violence deeply ingrained within his survivor's guilt and he
will chose an alternative to violence wherever feasible. He arrives in San Francisco just in time to unwittingly save a man's
life, thus becoming a part of the very stuggle he is attempting to avoid! Having been assigned to a new case by Judge Wilbur Orville, in
which he is accompanied by Luke Cole, his twelve year olf Ward, Becka Fosse, and 'Manolito' Gonsales, the young son ofd
a dead outlaw who stumbled into their cam one night, more dead than alive, Paul continues his struggle in behalf of people
unable to take on corrupt and violent men on their own. Returning to Neavda with a slight detour to Nex Pez teritory in
hopes of purchasing one of the spotted horses for his ranch that he's heard so much about, Paul and his companions are passing
thru the Columbia basin region when he chases on a woman with several small children who desperately needs his help.
Putting his own needs and wishes aside, Paul becomes embroiled in an Indian conflict that has no solution that can be fair
to either side, but neither can he, in good conscience just walk away with a woman at risk. He has to chose the lesser of
two evils and hope for the best! In Paul McWhorter's day, PTSD was known as 'solder's heart'.
When he receives a call for help from a former soldier under his command during the War, he rides to see
if he can help. Or, at the very least, see that the man, perhaps unjustly accused of murder because the victim was as well
liked as he was hated, at least had his day in court and a proper buriel. But what he runs into is a corrupt town
ready to bury a man rather than allow him to expose what must be hidden at all costs. And if one, why not tow? Or as many
as it takes?
5. “ [Shaddle Junction] circa
1869 ~ under contract
until 2016 ~ The union of the two railroad giants, backed by the United
States Government in a daring bid to claim the Continental land from sea to sea, is a moment of history so monumental, Paul
Lee McWhorter wishes for his younger companions to be able to say they were there. So he accepts a job from one of the railroad
official's to keep a known bandit away from the festivities so he can't spoil it for everyone. However, once he arrives, he
discovers its simply a rival the man wants removed from his rise to power, and the silent Virginian refuses. While they are
watching the ceremonies at Summit Point, Utah, he is abruptly confronted with a younger version of dead sweetheart in Virginia,
who claims he is her father! But before he can question her further, she disappears into the crowd!
When she is kidnapped he feels honor bound to attempt to help her for her mother's sake, even though she is more of a problem
to him than her kidnappers, as the answer to the nearly thirty year old mystery is answered to his horror!
For the first time, fours years
after the ending of the American Civil War, sixty-nine year old Paul Lee McWhorter is faced with the effect of attempting
to 'forget' the terrors of war and his horrific months as a prisoner-of-war in a Union Army death camp. Having reached a point
where his past and his present collided explosively in his shattering battle with PTSD, known then as "Soldier's
Heart" who's demands force him to withdrawn into the wilderness and face head-on what he cannot
escape. As the spring in Utah, where he and his family witnessed the historic union of the transcontinental railroads uniting
East and West while North and South are still struggling to rebuild their shattered lives, gives way to summer and autumn
in the high country of Nevada, Paul's heart finally begins to mend and he looks to the future shaped in the Autumn of
Speckled Bird. - The unspoken
belief that a man's actions now weigh more than anything he might be escaping from his past is severely tested as Paul McWhorter
and his group keep an earlier promise, returning to guide the greenhorn physician Drew Wilder and his companion, the retiring
mission's senior Padre across the Sierra Nevadas to San Francisco. But a strange, haunted figure steps out of the early snows
and the greenhorn's past; demanding the life of the mild manner doctor as the price of their continued safe pasage to the
Coast! ♣ Paul McWhorter, Luke Cole and Manuel Gonzales were a part of Becka Fosse’s life for as long as she could remember. When
she was ten years old and her Texas Ranger father was killed by a deranged rancher who’s shot and killed his wife and
best friend in the delusion they were having an affair behind his back, Paul put her up on the bedroll tied at the back of
his patient dun’s saddle, told her to duck as he swung his leg over the top of the broad backed mustang to mount up
and ride away, and she’d been with him and Luke Cole ever since. Manolito was the orphan of an outlaw, apparently a
couple of years younger than herself, who’d simply wandered into their camp one night, dazed, bloodied, unable to speak
about the tragedy, but he could cook better tortillas and range-tough beef than either of the two grown men; when no one claimed
him, he was simply given his own horse at the next town and they’d became inseparable.
As elder statesman of their little group, Paul McWhorter had always made it clear that on the day after her eighteenth birthday, if
he was still alive at seventy, a scant three weeks after that, he would retire from enforcing the Law, but on that day
she was to catch the nearest stage and ride Back East to claim her late father’s inheritance. Like Luke Cole’s
constant lament that one day he
would find a good woman with a small spread and bust cows instead of heads, it always seemed dreamlike, and never near enough
to happen in reality-until the day Luke met his match in the Widow Perry and he shook hands with Paul and Manolito but oddly
ignored her gamely struck forth hand to pull her into a disgusting ‘womanly’ embrace that turned her world upside down as she rode out behind the
leather tough Lawman and the oddly grinning black haired imp who knew how to cipher better than she did as she approached
her three hundred and sixty-fourth day until her 18th birthday.
His belief in a Divine if remote
Presence who ultimately settles life's scores for mankind, is severely tested when Paul McWhorter is unexpectedly thrust
into the new conflict as a federal Marshal when he lands in the midst of a man he knows to be a ruthless killer - now praying on unsuspecting people but is revenge his to exact before a terrible injustice is committed? ♣ It is Becka Fosse's eighteenth birthday, Paul McWhorter's
seventieth birthday, the day at which he has promised himself to give up his job as a lawman and return to live in his Virginia
home until such time as Becka is married and no longer needs him. He looks forward to a life no more demanding than the necessities
of rising daily and finding a way to keep his grandchildren entertained with his stories of life on the Old West, but leaving
his past is easier than making his past leave him alone! ♣ Life in the America East of the Muddy
Mississip is a world unto itself where the rules of the West don't apply! ◊ With Becka Fosse, now happy as Mrs. Tad Huntington Quade, the legendary
lawman Paul Lee McWhorter settles down on what remains of his family's plantation on the James River, seeking the active life
of a country gentleman while clinging to his love for the past in his interest in a good racing stallion that proudly carries
the McWhorter family honor. But where pursuit of money and pride collide, there are far too many shadows where evil can hide,
seizing on the most unexpected of people to cause the same kind of conflicts in jodhpurs and silks as found in buckskins and
sweat stained Levi's! And the same call to justice and right, badge or no badge...you can take the wash the dust out of the
clothes he brought East of the Big Muddy but the West won't run easily from the blood of the man it nurtured and raised in
self reliance! Life in the America East of the Muddy Mississip is a world unto itself where the rules of the West
don't apply! ◊ With
Becka Fosse, now happy as Mrs. Tad Huntington Quade, the legendary lawman Paul Lee McWhorter settles down on what remains
of his family's plantation on the James River, seeking the active life of a country gentleman while clinging to his love for
the past in his interest in a good racing stallion that proudly carries the McWhorter family honor. But where pursuit of money
and pride collide, there are far too many shadows where evil can hide, seizing on the most unexpected of people to cause the
same kind of conflicts in jodhpurs and silks as found in buckskins and sweat stained Levi's! And the same call to justice
and right, badge or no badge...you can take the wash the dust out of the clothes he brought East of the Big Muddy but the
West won't run easily from the blood of the man it nurtured and raised in self reliance!
With Becka happily married and busy running a business
of her own, seventy-four year old Paul McWhorter naturally assumes he can return to his father's house on the James River
with nothing more ahead of him than bouncing her babies on his knee and telling them sanitized stories of his life as lawman
- until a hunted figure steps out of his past with the five year old daughter of Speckled Bird, asking Paul's help in raising
her in a world where her dark eyes, her straight black hair and keen wit will always mark her as an outsider!
“ Sumner Hidalgo “ ~
Manolito Gonzales discovers that he has a son and claims him away from a place where he has never been allowed to grow roots,
moving the shy boy to Paul McWhorter's Nevada ranch by Lake Lohotan where he can stay and grow with
the other children the retired lawman has gathered around himself in the course of his life's journey. Sumner retells his adventures as a grown man, linking the legendary
lawman of The Old West with the generation that follow, having experienced a world war as a corespondent for a major New York
paper. Like he says, short of dying, there isn't any danger or loneliness he hasn't already faced, as the lengthy saga of
this quiet Virginian, surfeit with violence after the War Between the States finally concludes with the lessons of love, faith,
and hope passed on to the next generation.
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