Gran Quivira — Regis McCafferty

The short story, The Kendal Affair, first appeared in my collection of short stories titled, The Sherlock Holmes Adventure. Though complete in itself, it left unanswered questions for Victorian enquiry agent, Joshua Pitt, and prompted a second and longer story titled, Kendall Endgame. Because in some ways, Endgame is a continuation of the original story, The Kendal Affair has been included as the first story in this collection.

The title story, Gran Quivira, is a rather non-traditional romance placed in the late 1930s between an young Navajo woman and an out of work Apache construction worker, both searching for more out of life than they have experienced before they met. Gran Quivira was a thriving Pueblo community in southern New Mexico several hundred years ago but was in ruins by the 1930s. The journey toward Gran Quivera and beyond is their story.

The final story, Just Plain Cliff Smith, was inspired by the true stories of some of the rugged characters who lived, loved, fought, and died in the Arizona Territory of the American Southwest during the late 1800s. Cliff Smith is an occasional but highly selective gun for hire with a simple code of ethics: Do unto others