Challengers of the Dust
In 1935, George Earle returned from college to his Oklahoma birthplace to find it drastically altered. The Dust Bowl and the Depression have transformed the bucolic farmtown into a desolate wasteland where few are healthy, happy, or employed. A chance encounter with Pretty Boy Floyd lands him in jail with a melancholy pulp-literary agent named Hart. They’re given one chance to avoid execution by accepting an unlikely task: find local powerbroker Doc Bennett’s wayward daughter. They head east meeting migrants, vagabonds, rail-riders, rainmakers, a few destined to become famous, a few too dangerous to live, and the most ghoulish acts of a starved population, while attempting to fulfill their impossible mission.
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William Bernhardt
William Bernhardt (The Last Chance Lawyer) is the author of over fifty books, including the bestselling Daniel Pike and Kenzi Rivera novels, the historical novel Challengers of the Dust, two books of poetry, and the ten Red Sneaker books on fiction writing. In addition, Bernhardt founded the Red Sneaker Writers Center to mentor aspiring writers. The Center hosts an annual writers conference (WriterCon), small-group writing retreats, a newsletter, and a bi-weekly podcast. More than forty of Bernhardt’s students have subsequently published with major houses. He is also the owner of Balkan Press, which publishes poetry and fiction as well as the literary journal Conclave. In 2019, Bernhardt received the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for the Book.
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