Power in the Blood
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4.1 • 13 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Siblings separated on an orphan train reunite years later to seek revenge in the lawless West in this “great novelist’s masterwork” (Stephen King).
In 1869, the Dugan siblings board an orphan train in upstate New York. Adopted by different families at separate stops along the train’s westward journey, Clay, Zoe, and Drew vow to find one another as soon as they can, but tragic circumstances conspire against them.
Clay avenges the brutal murder of his foster parents and becomes one of the most feared bounty hunters in the West. Raped by her new father, Zoe gives birth to a daughter whose vivid blue birthmark portends the gift of second sight. And Drew, abandoned in the desert by a religious fanatic, is rescued by renegade Apache brothers and falls in with a crowd of murderers, prostitutes, and bank robbers.
When fate finally reunites the siblings, Zoe enlists Clay and Drew in a plot against a ruthless Colorado gold magnate bent on stealing her fortune. Decades spent practicing the art of survival have taught the Dugans that the odds are always stacked against them—but if they stopped to consider the odds, they would have been dead long ago.
Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as a “great page-turning, stay-up-late-into-the-night-saga” and ideal for fans of Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy, Power in the Blood takes readers on an epic journey into the dark heart of the American frontier.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Matthews here confirms the storytelling gifts and knowledge of the bad, lawless Old West that he demonstrated in Heart of the Country . This is a spellbinding, tragicomic, rip-snorting and deeply moving novel about three sibling orphans who are wrenchingly separated in 1869 and are accidentally, joyfully--but briefly--reunited 16 years later in Colorado. The trio--Clay, Zoe and Drew Dugan--board a westward-bound ``orphan train'' in upstate New York and disembark to meet foster parents in three different states. Clay later kills the farmhands who murder his kind foster parents and becomes a sheriff, then a bounty hunter. Zoe, brutally raped by her foster father, a strict farmer, gives birth to Omie, born with a strange blue birthmark across her face. Omie's paranormal powers--she can foresee events, read minds, teleport objects and converse with spirits--will protect Zoe in her loveless marriage to Colorado mining magnate Leo Brannan, a politically ambitious monster who ditches Zoe for a gold-digging prostitute and who hires a transvestite assassin to deprive Zoe of her share of their fortune. Drew runs away from his foster father, a religious fanatic, is rescued by Apaches, and becomes a whorehouse attendant, then a bank robber. The siblings' reunion leads to a bizarre train robbery, part of Zoe's revenge on Leo. Despite too many improbable coincidences and recurring episodes of lurid melodrama, this gripping story provides compelling commentary on blind ambition, murder, sex, euthanasia, true grit, the vagaries of fate and the self-destructiveness at the heart of America.
