This Thy Brother (Five Star Western Series)
Melvin and his older brother, Richard Pate, are on their own. The pair have left the rest of their family and struck out on the Santa Fe Trail, hired on with freighters moving goods on wagons from Mexico to the U.S. Their parents and youngest brother Abel are looking for ranch land, while family friends Daniel Lewis and his daughters are developing a merchant and trading enterprise in Santa Fe.
This Thy Brother is the sequel to Father Unto Many Sons, finalist in the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award competition for Best Western Novel in 2018.
Set in 1840s New Mexico, the novel is tight in plot, lean in language, bringing readers directly into the Pates’ lives. Readers follow their sometimes-reckless actions, witness the often-dangerous consequences of their decisions, and travel the rugged terrain with them, along with Ute and Navajo and the Mexican army. Characters and their flaws are finely drawn; settings such as Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly are rich in detail.
Most striking about the book are the family relationships—rivalries, single-minded pig-headedness, jealousies, resentments—that stoke sons’ rebellions against their fathers and the ties that bind one generation to the next.
