The Reata Knows

California, 1852.Fourteen-year-old Mateo Robles wants a horse of his own and a place in a world that keeps trying to make him smaller.When Mateo joins his uncle Tomás on a cattle drive to the mining camps, he enters a harsh frontier shaped by hunger, violence, and prejudice-but also by the hard-won skill and dignity of the vaquero life. Along the road, Mateo learns the work of rope, saddle, horse, and herd, and begins to understand that the cowboy ways praised by newcomers were carried long before by men like his own people.As stolen wages, dangerous men, and the dream of buying a pinto colt named Lucero push him toward adulthood, Mateo must decide what kind of man he wants to become: one ruled by anger, or one strong enough to carry his name with pride.The Reata Knows is a literary coming-of-age western about identity, courage, family, and the quiet power of knowing who you are.

Pagina's: 178, Paperback, Independently published