The Vigilante Quartet
When I wrote God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, I had no thought of writing more than one book about this early period in Montana's history, which coincides with the Civil War. But the more I learn about it, the more intrigued I am, so now I have written three novels, with a fourth in the works.
The three published books are listed below in the order they took place, rather than the order I wrote them. God's Thunderbolt takes place during December 1863 and January 1864. The Devil in the Bottle occurs during March 8, 9, & 10, 1864. Gold Under Ice happens between May and September 1864.
And The Ghost at Beaverhead Rock is set during November 1864 - January 1865. God willing, it'll be out in the summer of 2014.
God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana
In Alder Gulch, ruffians rule and murder is tolerated. Travelers who try to go home with their gold disappear or turn up dead. Attorney Daniel Stark wants to uphold the law, but there is no law in this remote wilderness. No law but survival of the smartest. Can Dan and his friends break the conspiracy of greed that takes other people's gold by any means necessary?
Read more about God's Thunderbolt, the 2009 Spur winner for best first novel.
The Devil in the Bottle
More feared than God Himself, Joseph (aka Jack) Slade settles near Alder Gulch and Virginia City. A fine man and loving husband when sober, he turns into a demon when drunk. Just a month after the Vigilantes cleaned up the criminal conspiracy that made honest people's lives hell, Daniel Stark and Slade's other friends warn him that his drunken binges will not be tolerated. But Slade does not believe them, and he pushes the Vigilantes to the limit.
Read more about The Devil in the Bottle, the second book in the Vigilante series. (I originally wrote Gold Under Ice as the sequel to God's Thunderbolt, but afterwards, the story of Joseph Slade demanded to be written. Logically and chronilogically in story terms, it fits between the two earlier novels.)
Gold Under Ice
"Carol Buchanan moves well beyond the usual historical fiction realm, and enters into a story of Wall Street gold trading and the value of President Abraham Lincoln's greenback currency. The story of Daniel Stark, and his quest to repay his family's indebtedness, is mirrored by the larger historical drama of the Wall Street battle of the greenback dollar against the gold Double Eagle coin. The fate of America, embroiled in the horrific carnage of the Civil War, hangs in the balance. The threads of Daniel Stark's life become intricately woven in the arcane financial drama played out by the gold traders in New York. In the days before electronic trades, the gold market was a rough and ready business, that could easily determine the outcome of the war, and the future of America, in just a few failed or successful trades."
(From the review by Wayne Hurlbert in Blog Business World. Read more about Gold Under Ice, the third book in the Vigilante series. (I originally wrote Gold Under Ice as the sequel to God's Thunderbolt, but afterwards, the story of Joseph Slade demanded to be written. Logically and chronilogically in story terms, Gold Under Ice is the third in the Vigilante Series, but because it was written before I planned to write The Devil in the Bottle, there is no mention of Joseph Slade.)