He came for a five-hundred-dollar bounty. He stayed to burn the town down.
Eldridge Sample rides into the mining boomtown of Solitude looking for two cheap bank robbers and a quiet drink. What he finds is a kingdom built on theft. Prosper King, a ruthless land baron, owns the gold, the water, and the law-and he just murdered a prospector in broad daylight to prove it.
When the dead man's Apache wife, Nita, screams for justice in a street full of cowards, King orders his men to silence her. But he didn't count on the drifter watching from the shadows.
Abandoning his bounty, Sample rescues the widow and uncovers a conspiracy that runs deeper than the mineshafts beneath the street. King isn't just stealing a claim; he's stealing the future of the territory.
Trapped in a town where the sheriff is bought, the deputies are outlaws, and the only friend they have is a terrified undertaker, Sample and Nita are forced into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. From the claustrophobic darkness of a drainage tunnel to a tense standoff in a church bell tower, they must keep the proof of King's crimes alive until the circuit judge arrives.
But when the law finally steps off the stagecoach, Sample learns a hard lesson: in Solitude, the gavel is just another weapon in the tyrant's hand.
Out of options and out of time, Sample decides that if he can't save the town, he'll save the truth.
"King wanted a fire. We're going to give him a town full of it."
Explosive, noir-tinged, and morally complex, Town of Ash is a Western thriller about the price of corruption and the cleansing power of fire. Perfect for fans of Deadwood, the tactical action of The Way of the Gun, and the hard-boiled style of Elmore Leonard.
