THE GHOST OF ROME

The Ghost of Rome explores that notion in gripping detail, utilizing an ensemble cast to bring life to the final years of the greatest empire our world has ever known. Although sprawling armies, complex war strategies, and epic battle sequences are a hallmark of the series, Virgil has created a Roman world driven by intrigue and colored with realism. Even while delving into complicated subjects such as religion, government, immigration, and war, The Ghost of Rome remains so true to history that it invites the reader to walk the very path of those who lived it. 

THE ALTAR OF THE GUN 

Virgil Cain’s unsparing saga of war and conquest is an ode to the authority of powder and lead. Utilizing an ensemble cast to create a panoramic view of the Civil War and the Era of Western Expansion, the truest charm of The Altar of the Gun lies in the richness of its characters: Gus, the disaffected Southerner whose haunted past sends him on an odyssey of the American West; Charlie, the well-born Arkansawyer who escapes into New Mexico following the sins of Centralia, not realizing that demons travel light; Breck, the restless Wisconsin youth who freights from St. Joe to Denver and everywhere between; Sturge, the Kentucky farmboy who becomes an unlikely drover on the Goodnight-Loving Trail and a top hand for the King of the Pecos; Pony, the talented horse thief from Rock Island who finds enough trouble for ten lifetimes; Bill, the good-humored Texan who so values friendship that he forsakes a good life as a Texas rancher to ride the trails and sleep under wagons.

In The Altar of the Gun, the tragedies and triumphs of the Civil War set the American people on a collision course with the shadows of its past. Prior to the great war, America had its boot on the throat of the indigenous population of the West, but in warring with itself, it turned away from a vengeful foe. When the war ended and the wheels of commerce once again looked west, it found a land troubled by the renewal of a longstanding war between the white settler and the red warrior. Long before a miner could strike gold, a rancher could graze stock, a railroad company could lay a track, or a territorial politician could lobby congress for statehood, the most hostile terrain in the contiguous first had to be tamed.

THE FOUR CORNERS 

OF DEATH

Even a territory has to grow up.

Left twisting in the wind when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 without touching its desert soil, Arizona languished in a prolonged battle with the natives and the elements. That ended with a silver boom in the Dragoons and a copper boom in the Mules. An untold wealth had been discovered in the desolate mountains of southeastern Arizona, with no easy way to haul it out. Overnight, plans began to connect Tucson by rail to Los Angeles and El Paso.

With the Arizona Territory finally opened to commerce, men of all sorts came pouring in. Investors like Milt Joyce from San Francisco and Bill Harris from Dodge City, professional gamblers like Johnny Tyler from Leadville and Doc Holliday from Las Vegas, and opportunists like Wyatt Earp from Dodge City and Bob Winders from Fort Worth arrived before the railroad workers had finished laying the track. Nor was that all, as a plague of rustlers pushed west by the end of the Lincoln County War, the Mason County War, and the El Paso Salt War found a home in the canyons and cliffs of southeastern Arizona, where they had steady access to Mexican cattle south of the border and American meat markets north it.

All the while, the Apache were stirring. Forced onto a reservation and starved into submission, the final degradation for undeniable warriors like Lozen and Geronimo was the sight of a steady stream of white men pouring into the Apacheria and defiling in a dozen different debaucherous manners the land they cared so deeply about. Nor were they the only ones feeling left out in the cold. For those early settlers and pioneers who fought to keep their land through the worst of the Apache Wars, they did not appreciate being skipped in line by every Johnny-Come-Lately with a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow.

For three years beginning in 1880, Arizona was the wildest the west ever got. Roving gangs of rustlers, bitter range wars, corrupt politicians, deadly gambling rivalries, opportunistic lawmen, renegade Apache war bands, and competing business interests plagued the territory just as it finally lurched toward statehood, providing the clearest indication yet that progress comes at a cost. 

THE OLD PUEBLO

Virgil Cain’s unsparing saga of the Southwest is an ode to the rugged beauty of the Arizona desert. Utilizing an ensemble cast to create a panoramic view of the early years of the Arizona Territory, the truest charm of The Old Pueblo lies in the richness of its characters: Larcena Pennington, the iron-willed settler who refuses to quit the frontier no matter how much misfortune paints her doorstep; John Schuster, the Mexican War veteran who goes west to escape a society that suddenly seems foreign to him; Brad, the escaped slave who dreams of becoming the first black cattleman in Arizona; Charlie Shibell, the Missouri tenderfoot who flees St. Louis to avoid the Civil War, only to find that it has followed him to California; Johnny Behan, the brash young freighter with designs of becoming a famous Indian fighter.

In The Old Pueblo, the first white settlers arrive to the Arizona Territory to find a land troubled by a longstanding war between the Mexicans and the Apache. Long before a miner could strike gold, a rancher could graze stock, a railroad company could lay a track, or a politician could lobby for statehood, the most hostile terrain in the contiguous had to be tamed. Along the way, even the strongest pioneer would suffer doubt as to whether they could survive an unbreakable land peopled by the fearless Apache.