Grizzly Moon — Patrick Dearen

For nineteen years, Wash Baker has been haunted by the memory of a cattle drive and firing into the night at what he thought was a grizzly, only to kill his young son and narrowly miss a second boy, Trey. Now, in 1899, confirmed tracks of grizzly-a species of bear unknown in Texas-have been found at a Davis Mountains camp meeting attended by Wash and his daughter, Grace. The congregants include Trey, now an adult and courting Grace, and Trey's father, Ed Mulholland. During the cattle drive, Mulholland's big talk about the dangers of a grizzly led Wash to panic and fire the fatal load of buckshot. Wash has long hated Mulholland, and even indoctrinated Grace from a young age to exact revenge on him someday. Now, with all of them striking out to hunt down this confirmed grizzly, Wash has a chance to right the wrongful shot of years ago and perhaps deliver judgment on Mulholland. Accompanying the party are Tommy, Wash's intellectually disabled hand whose affinity for Mulholland's mistreated bloodhound Sleuth is fated to cause strife. Also riding along is Isom, the camp meeting preacher who desperately searches for peace after losing his wife and newborn. Meanwhile, up from Mexico have come twelve-year-old Rosindo Mesa and his sister. In the Fronterizas range, the same grizzly has killed their father, and a curandero (healer) has told Rosindo that his father will be doomed to wander the nights as a spirit unless the boy kills the silver bear before the next full moon rises an hour into the sky. For both parties, the search for the bear, and for peace, becomes a matter of survival, as nature resists and personalities clash. Finally, on lofty Baldy Peak, the full moon rises-and Wash, Rosindo, and the others come face-to-face with not only the grizzly, but their destinies. This novel is based on the actual 1899 hunt for the only documented grizzly ever found in Texas--