Black Powder White Smoke [signed] [first edition]

Two men, black and white.In New Orleans, the black man, Honey Boutrille, saves a prostitute’s life by killing her attacker.In San Francisco, the white man, Twice Emmerson, kills a Chinaman because he likes killing.These two men go on the lam, and their adventures, nip and tuck through scrape after scrape, are the zest of Loren Estleman’s wildest tale of the West. The protagonists are different as black and white—Honey rough but honorable, Emmerson chaotic and violent. They attract not only the dogs of the law but the avid interest of those who would exploit them. A journalist tracks Honey, eager to turn his life story into a cautionary parable that will chill white readers. A showman seeks Emmerson, cynically eager to sign him to a contract for the stage and create a competitor to Buffalo Bill.Honey and Emmerson rage through an authentic West drawn with a fierce and gleeful truthfulness, leaving trails of bodies, pursued ever more relentlessly, and moving always toward a central and inescapable meeting place, Denver, Colorado.The meeting has the scope, inevitability, and shattering power of Greek tragedy.