“Blood never forgets—and neither does the trail.”
In the fall of 1889, former Pinkerton agent Elijah Creed receives a letter that cleaves his world in two.
It’s not a summons. It’s a reckoning.
The daughter he never knew exists. Her name is Marla Blackthorn. And she’s wanted for a massacre that Creed doesn’t believe she committed.
Haunted by the sins he served under a badge and the silence that built his legacy, Elijah saddles up for one final ride west—to find her, to face her, or to bury what’s left of them both.
Excerpt from Chapter One:
The letter sat beside the hardtack like a curse no one dared speak aloud. Creed stared at the handwriting—angular, precise, bearing no signature, just truth heavy as a headstone.
“You have a daughter. Her name is Marla. She’s in Idaho. She’s in trouble.”
He didn’t eat that morning. Didn’t shave. Just loaded the Colt, saddled up the roan mare, and rode into the sunrise with questions coiled in his gut like a rattler.
Callum’s camera pans slow. Dust curls through late afternoon light. A revolver rests atop an 1880s rail map. Beneath it: Denver. The place Elijah Creed leaves. The place where law ends and truth begins.
đź’¬ Author Insight: Harlan Boone Cartwright
“Creed’s story came to me after branding calves with my uncles at dawn—same dirt, same silence, same burden. It’s about what happens when the badge fades but the weight stays. Hollow Trail is a story about men who only know how to carry justice like a bullet—fast, final, and silent.”
He doesn’t speak much. But his hands tremble when he holds her name.
That’s where we meet Elijah Creed: a man unlearning the law, relearning blood.
He carries the guilt of empire, the ghost of a wife buried too young, and a Colt he’s sworn never to draw unless he means to bury what stands in front of him.
He’s not riding to forgive.
He’s riding to understand.
Inside the envelope: a photo, worn thin at the edges. A young woman—staring sharp-eyed into the lens, a pistol holstered high at her hip. Beneath her portrait: “Blackthorn, M. — Armed. Dangerous. Fugitive.”
Creed doesn’t know if she’s innocent.
But he knows she looks like her mother.
That’s the question at the heart of Hollow Trail—
Can redemption ride the same road as regret?
Creed rides through a frontier fraying at the edges: mercenaries in marshal’s coats, ghost towns echoing with Empire’s lies, and sermons that promise salvation but deal in blood.
And somewhere in that broken land… is his daughter.
One man’s past. One woman’s future. And a trail hollowed out by justice, memory, and the lies we die believing.
Hollow Trail – Available June 30!
đź“Ť Tags: #WesternFiction #HistoricalThriller #FathersAndDaughters #NewBooks2025 #FrontierDrama #BookTok #SlowBurnFiction #GrittyReads
