The Beauty of the Days Gone By

Book excerpt: In 1926, ninety year-old Charles Goodnight faces the reality that his life will end soon. His accomplishments are legendary as one of the early cattlemen to blaze the Goodnight-Loving Trail and the first to settle permanently in Comancheria. J. Evetts Haley, a young historian collecting folklore for the local historical society, forges a close bond with Goodnight as the elder plainsman shares the memories of his life. As Goodnight fights the urge to free his conscience of a dark secret, his reminiscences turn to the events leading up to the Civil War and during Reconstruction when the frontier of Texas is in chaos. And amidst this chaos emerges Goodnight’s close friend and former Texas Ranger R. L. Terry, who returns home to find his house in flames, his wife mortally wounded, and his two boys hauled away into captivity. As his eldest boy becomes fully Indianized under the tutelage of Quanah Parker, fighting desperately to defend their homelands in the Indian Wars of the 1860s and 70s, R.L.’s desperate search for his sons parallels the relentless passing of the old ways and leads in the end to a revelatory meeting of lives destined from the beginning. Stone’s breathtaking storytelling pushes the conventions of historical fiction, deftly weaving the tragic captivity narrative into the calamitous clash of cultures that defined the settlement of the American West. Hailed by critics, The Beauty of the Days Gone By announces Jason Stone as a major new writer of American fiction.