One might say Roland Cheek learned to write unconventionally, penciling newspaper columns and magazine story ideas on scraps of paper he pulled from -- and stuffed back into -- Levi pockets. A saddlehorn was his writing desk, and birds chirping from trees his critics.
Echoes of Vengeance is a well-imagined and compelling read. From Montana's high plains to the Natchez docks, from the cowtowns of Texas to the Oregon coast, Roland Cheek paints his young protagonist's odyssey with a deft hand, portraying the values of courage, principle, and friendship on a canvas as broad as America itself.
The Valediction For Revenge series never began full-blown from Roland's saddlehorn drawing board. Instead, he penciled out the 5th book in the series first, saw it was incomplete, so wrote what became the 6th series book. After books 5 and 6, Roland liked the characters so much that he decided to go back to the beginning. Echoes of Vengeance was that beginning. And Jethro Spring, his ill-starred protagonist was off and running from the "echoes" of his own "vengeance."
