"I've got something I want to say right up front," says Boone McCallister, as he speaks into an Edison Dictaphone in 1937, "and that is that I did not feed David Klee to an alligator. That damned rumor has hounded me my whole life."

Back in 1864, with his father gone to fight for the South, young Boone embarks on a cattle drive with the McCallister's Flat Iron Ranch in pioneer Florida, sending a herd of cattle to the Gulf port south of Tampa. Besides navigating dangerous cattle country, the headstrong, na ve Boone encounters vengeful Yankees, orders a hanging, braves alligators, and comes into contact with a group of swamp outlaws, the Klees, which begins a costly feud between the two families.

When the Klees pillage and set fire to the Flat Iron Ranch, they also kidnap a comely slave girl, Lena. Against the odds, Boone must lead an operation to get her back, leading to a showdown in the middle of unfamiliar and unsettled outlaw territory that would one day become Miami.

Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns--books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians--are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.