From Roland's Bookstore
Echoes of Vengeance
An isolated military outpost in a remote
region of the Department of the Upper Missouri.
An embittered commandant who believes unkind fate kept him from fame and glory during
the recent War of Secession. A band of starving Blackfeet too riddled with smallpox
to withdraw, as ordered, to their reservation. A young mixed-breed army interpreter
whose aging parents are with the Blackfeet tries
to prevent a massacre-in-the-making; he's beaten and dragged to the guardhouse for the attempt.
Thus the stage is set and principal characters in place for the opening pages of
Echoes of Vengeance
(First book in the Valediction for Revenge series)
5-1/2 X 8-1/2 12-pt. cover 256 pages $16.95
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.
Stan Lynde, creator of the acclaimed Rick O'Shay cartoon strip and several great Western novels, had this to say
of Roland's first Western:
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."
Tales of the West that Was
and the West that Is
(or send check or money order for $16.95 to Roland Cheek, P.O. Box 1118, Columbia Falls, MT 59912)
