To Honor the Dead

Joseph W. Shaw

From the earliest beginnings of the white man's relentless march across the Great Plains through the shameful Indian tribal relocations and bloody military campaigns of the late 1800s, tragedy has clung to the haunted landscape surrounding the old Tyree homestead in western Oklahoma, the agony of warfare and defeat lingering far beyond a generation, a single lifetime.

Now, after nearly half a century, a more recent tragedy is coming to light.

To Honor the Dead is the story of Colter Tyree's prodigal homecoming, just as a corrupt local law enforcement officer and a mixed-blood southern Cheyenne trickster and Vietnam veteran named Oliver Wendell Holmes Lonewolf begin a deadly dance of escalating violence and long overdue redemption.

"Shaw is a helluva writer. His plotting is superb, his dialogue believable, and he has the gift of mixing action with literary talent. To Honor the Dead beautifully doubles as a suspense novel and a work of literature. I was torn between being honored to read it and jealous I didn't write it myself."--Tony Hillerman

Winner of the New Mexico Book Award for a Novel--adventure or drama, 2009. Finalist for the 2009 Oklahoma Book Award, fiction.

"This modern Western is a compact novel featuring intriguing characters....Shaw successfully shapes a sharp portrayal of a man who can no longer avoid his past or his future. As it moves toward its suspenseful conclusion, To Honor the Dead bears down on you like a steamroller let loose over a sharp incline."--Pasatiempo

Joseph W. Shaw was born and grew up in western Oklahoma. A 1972 graduate of the University of New Mexico and a 1973 graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers, Shaw currently lives in Albuquerque with Gina, his wife and business partner of forty-three years. Together they own and operate the real estate firm of Shaw & Shaw Ltd., Realtors.

6 x 9 195 pages