A Fist Full of Grit

By 1880, the Indian Wars had wound down. Cooper Hughes, a twenty-year-old, scrappy tomboy had inherited one of the finest cattle ranches in the Palouse country of the beautiful Northwest. So, how bad can her life be? She's about to find out when her entire herd is stolen. Without cattle to sell, her ranch near River Ridge in Washington Territory, faces bankruptcy. The authorities threaten to take her little brother away, and she discovers her best friend has been knifed to death. Some would give up. Not a survivor like Cooper. She finds a well-paying job, singing in a sleazy stage revue two hours down the Snake River. It means she must live a secret double life if she is to maintain her family's respectability back home. If anyone can manage it, she can. That is, until a Harvard man, way too handsome for his own good, walks into her life. How much stress can one girl handle? Cooper finds out when confronted by a serial killer murdering young women in the Palouse.