Back in the day, before mechanization, there was seemingly no shortage of hired hands. It was a time before the persistent admonition to stay in school if you don't want to dig ditches for a living had become dogma. But these things wouldn't have mattered to Teddy Walker anyway as he really didn't have a choice. From afar, the naïve person who knew only that Teddy Walker had lived and worked on ranches for a large part of his life might get the romantic notion that it had been all peaches and cream. They might erroneously equate rural solitude and nature with happiness. Granted, not all hired hands had a past like Teddy Walker's. There'd been good times, but they did not last. Their demise had left Teddy with a skepticism of what life held for him that he occasionally tempered with Olympia beer. So far, that approach to life had proven itself to be pretty much justified. And in spite of everything that had happened, life had been tolerable, until now. Damn the bad luck.

Hired Hand

Hansen, John

Literature & Fiction

Summit Creek Press

Hard Times is the story of two people beginning a new life as homesteaders in eastern Montana during the year 1929. One of them, Phil Caldwell, is committed to this adventure, the other, his wife Martha, is not. Nonetheless, they go from their relatively comfortable city life to the desolation and loneliness of a one room shack far from civilization. The prospects of bettering themselves via this free government land that was to be theirs quickly fades. Life during these times was hard enough for the childless couple but subject their relationship to the unrelenting elements of the Montana plains and something was bound to give. And give it did sending Phil and Martha down a tumultuous path of uncertainty and danger.

Hard Times

Action & Adventure

Times were tough. Myles Keegan was a logger in the “big woods” of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. He took pride in what he did even though it barely made a living for him and his wife and son. The reality of his situation was Taulman Logging dictated his financial well-being. And then came that fateful day in the fall of 1897. It was a day that would start him on an insane quest that he never imagined himself doing but, as it turned out, he didn’t really have a choice. He’d laughed at the others who had gone but now, seemingly everyone, his wife included, thought he should do this. If he were man enough to see it through, and he had some luck, life would be good. On the other hand, if he fell short in either of these categories, his life might not be worth living at all.

Out of Necessity

Genre Fiction

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Books by Summit Creek Press

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Hired Hand

Hard Times

Out of Necessity