Readers who enjoy classic Max Brand Westerns will enjoy every page of Davis's first novel ..."—True West Magazine on Wyoming Showdown.Rakeheart, Wyoming, is a town with troubles. Murders. Violence. Deceit. Into its crosscurrents comes Kane, a troubleshooter sent west to learn why ex-army officer Jared Wilkins was killed. Kane encounters hostility at every turn. The rancher's widow emerges as his prime suspect even as the townspeople who ask him to become sheriff make it clear they are playing a deceitful game. As Kane tries to impose law and order on a town that has its own purposes at heart, he struggles to plumb the depths of Rachel Wilkins, who holds tightly to her own secrets. When the violence erupts, he is left with no allies except Rachel as they wage one fiery battle for the future, and the soul, of Rakeheart.

Rory Carrick left Wyoming's Buffalo Horn Valley in 1861 to fight the Civil War. But the place he returns to ten years later is not the one he left. Empirebuilder Jackson Jones is ruthless in his quest to build the biggest ranch the valley has ever known, in rivalry with the sly and crafty Francis Oliver. Defying them both, small rancher Rebecca Lewis and her aunt are scrapping to survive when Carrick joins in the fight. In a web of old friends and new enemies, in a valley where a murderer on the loose threatens to destroy everything Carrick and Rebecca are fighting for, Carrick finds that tracking down a killer is not just about justice, it is a game of life and death.