OUTLAW MARSHAL

Wagon Train. Gunsmoke. Wyatt Earp. Have Gun Will Travel. The Rifleman. Wanted: Dead or Alive. Cheyenne. Sugarfoot. Bonanza. Myriad numbers of westerns were TV fare as I was growing up. Easy plots, too. The respected sheriff (good guy) faced the outlaw or crooked townsman (bad guys). There was always reasoning before the reluctant “doing his duty” shoot ‘em up scene. The good guy always won, and sometimes the bad guys took to heart a learned lesson and became upstanding, law-abiding citizens of whatever western town they were in. Ahhh. Simple.

Since it’s been a long time since there have been any good westerns around and an even longer while since I’ve read any books in the western genre, I thought it might be fun to read Outlaw Marshal, book one in the new Return of the Stranger series by Al and Joanna Lacy. In a nutshell:

“A good deed grants outlaw Whipley Langford early release from prison

and a friendship with Chief U.S. Marshal John Brockman. Another good deed

gets Whip framed for murder and looking at life through a hangman’s noose.

John arrives just in time to reveal the true murderers and lead Whip to Christ”

Like the TV westerns, I found this book to be very simplistic. Perhaps that was the author’s intent. As I began reading, it struck me that even western frontiersmen were saved. Hmm. Curious. Never thought of that before. Marshal Brockman (in the book he’s always Chief Brockman, but that made me think more of a fireman) carries his Bible in his saddelebag and at every opportunity tries to lead the outlaws he encounters to Christ. When he arrests them, as he locks them up in jail, on the road as he delivers them to prison, and when he visits them. Hardly a page goes by where the gospel is not preached. The reader learns very quickly the steps to salvation: recognize your sin, realize you are going to hell if you aren’t saved, receive Christ, get baptized, then go out and serve.

A Multnomah paperback, I have two or three copies to share.

It can also be purchased here.

About The Authors: Al Lacy is an evangelist and author of more than one hundred historical and western novels, including the Journeys of the Stranger, Angel of Mercy, and Mail Order Bride series, with more than three million books in print. JoAnna Lacy, Al’s wife and longtime collaborator, is a retired nurse. The Lacys have been married over forty years and live in the Colorado Rockies.