The Lonesome Quarter

Book excerpt: Her name was Vera Mae, and she had been around these dusty tank towns too long—working the two-bit rodeos and cozying up to suckers, like this fat tourist in the bar. Oh God, she thought, I can con him and ditch him by nine-thirty, but what then? Sit in a hotel room. Get drunk and pass out. I'll be an old bag before I'm thirty. That was Vera Mae: fed up and ripe for trouble, when a lean ex-bronc rider named Lonnie drifted in from the desert...