New Release - RAILROADED (A Will Toal Novel) by J.L. Crafts

 

Will Toal has seen a lot of the world in his twenty-three years, including war, the death of his family, and the loss of everything he owns. The gold his father left him, buried in the family graveyard, provides hope for a new future. He is determined to leave Georgia and the past behind him, and start fresh in Carson Valley, at the base of the mountainous Sierra Nevada bowl cradling Lake Tahoe.

But here, Will comes up against a Goliath he never expected—Washington’s support of San Franciso capital and influence to finish the transcontinental railroad as soon as possible. Big business is backed by national pride and unbelievable monetary gain, and this means driving the railroad construction through the upper reaches of Carson Valley—no matter whose land stands in their way.

Untenable right-of-way disputes lead to a deadly gun battle between the railroad’s hired thugs and the Carson Valley ranchers who have homesteaded the Valley, but they are determined to stand their ground—or die on it.

Will and his fellow ranchers must try to survive the indomitable forces and insurmountable odds against them, fueled by more greed for power and money than they could ever have imagined. Can a compromise be reached in the completion of the grandest engineering effort the country has ever undertaken in its history, or will the ranchers and Will find themselves RAILROADED?  

EXCERPT

1868 Late Winter

Toal Ranch near Carson Valley, Nevada

 Will Toal had pulled up his boots and they had just hit the floor when he heard the shot. He stopped and held absolutely still. He knew the sound from the war—it was from a good distance. Sharp reverberations could bounce off the mountains for miles, but he could tell from the sound and direction it was still on his land. He had filed his homesteaded almost two years ago now. But the land agent in Carson City had held up the final paperwork. He had a meeting soon to try and finalize its purchase and get clear title. His ranch covered a full three thousand acres. It might take the better part of a day to get to the source, but guns going off on his land rarely signaled a good thing.

With that one simple sound, his day’s plans changed. Now, instead of working new horses, he was going to head out and see what tracks he could find in the dirt. Hopefully, the dry soil would tell him a story of what had happened; it usually did.