AN EPIC YA WESTERN TIME-TRAVEL ADVENTURE BEGINSâŚ
Twelve-year-old Dominick Dalesandro is obsessed with the Old Westâoutlaws, lawmen, and dusty frontier towns. But when a mysterious library book transports him back to 1888 Abilene, Kansas, history is no longer just a subject he studiesâŚitâs a world he must survive.
Sheriff Amos "Lone Wolf" Malone has chosen Dominick as his apprentice, giving him the chance to live out his Wild West dreams under a new name: Pete Moss. But adventure quickly turns to danger when Pete learns that the sheriff is doomed to die in just one month. Determined to change history, Pete must navigate gunfights, town secrets, and a daring rescue missionâall while trying to stop a fate that the sheriff refuses to outrun.
As the stakes rise, Pete faces an impossible choice: save the kidnapped children heâs sworn to find or prevent the sheriffâs tragic end. One decision could change the past foreverâbut at what cost?
Perfect for fans of time-travel adventures and YA Westerns, The Abilene Kid: Dead Manâs Hand delivers heart-pounding action, historical intrigue, and an unforgettable hero. Ride into the past and join the adventure today! Grab your copy now and step into the Wild West!
AN EPIC YA WESTERN TIME-TRAVEL ADVENTURE BEGINSâŚ
Twelve-year-old Dominick Dalesandro is obsessed with the Old Westâoutlaws, lawmen, and dusty frontier towns. But when a mysterious library book transports him back to 1888 Abilene, Kansas, history is no longer just a subject he studiesâŚitâs a world he must survive.
Sheriff Amos "Lone Wolf" Malone has chosen Dominick as his apprentice, giving him the chance to live out his Wild West dreams under a new name: Pete Moss. But adventure quickly turns to danger when Pete learns that the sheriff is doomed to die in just one month. Determined to change history, Pete must navigate gunfights, town secrets, and a daring rescue missionâall while trying to stop a fate that the sheriff refuses to outrun.
As the stakes rise, Pete faces an impossible choice: save the kidnapped children heâs sworn to find or prevent the sheriffâs tragic end. One decision could change the past foreverâbut at what cost?
Perfect for fans of time-travel adventures and YA Westerns, The Abilene Kid: Dead Manâs Hand delivers heart-pounding action, historical intrigue, and an unforgettable hero. Ride into the past and join the adventure today! Grab your copy now and step into the Wild West!
MR. MARKUS SAT BACK IN HIS CHAIR AND SCRATCHED HIS HEAD.
âWhat are we going to do with you, Dominick?â
I had a feeling I knew what was coming, but I decided to play dumb. Mr. Markus and I had played this little game, but I didnât mind. He was a nice enough fellow. He had been teaching at Daniel Burnham Middle School on the northwest side of Chicago for three years now. I still remember when I first walked into his classroom. I had a huge smile on my face. This was the teacher I had been hoping for. I had heard really good things about him from other kids. And, so, now as I stood next to his desk on the last day of sixth grade, I was hoping the year would end just as it had begun. But that wasnât to be.
âDominick, you were supposed to write an essay on The Most Influential Person in Your Life. Some of the other kids in class wrote about a parent or a relative or a teacher or a coach or a counselor.
But you wrote about âLone Wolfâ Malone.â âIs there a problem with that?â I asked.
âWho the heck is Lone Wolf Malone, and how could he possibly be the most influential person in your life?â
I couldnât believe what I was hearing. Did Mr. Markus have no appreciation for one of the greatest lawmen of the Old West? Did he not realize that Lone Wolf had tamed frontier towns wherever he went? Did he not see that Amos Lone Wolf Malone had made it safe for widows and orphans to walk the streets at night? The man distinguished himself as a member of the Union army during the Civil War. Then went on to become the sheriff of Abilene, Kansas, from 1866 to 1888âlonger than any other frontier lawman. The man was a legend.
âMr. Markus, Amos Lone Wolf Malone is my personal hero. Heâs like my mentor. I can recite dozens of times when Lone Wolf made life safer for every man, woman, and child alive.â
âI just donât get it,â he said. âWeâre talking about a cowboy.â I refused to get angry with him. I counted to ten in my head. How could this man be so blind? Why couldnât he see that Lone Wolf was a heroâan American hero?
âLone Wolf Malone is the most influential person in my life,â I said. âHe taught me the difference between right and wrong. He taught me the meaning of responsibility. He taught me patience and compassion. How could I pick anyone else?â
Mr. Markus sighed. âLetâs try this. What if I asked you to write about the second most influential person in your life? Who would that be?â
I placed my finger on my lips. I thought for a moment. âI would have to say Marshall Joe âWild Hogâ Pittman.â
He rolled his eyes. âAnother Old West reference?â
âMarshall of Cheyenne, Wyoming in the 1870s.â
âOkay, how about the third most influential?â
I needed to think about that one for a bit. A few seconds later, I had my answer. âItâs gotta be Sheriff Chester âNight Riderâ
Hutchinson.â
âAnd he wasâŚ?â
âHe patrolled the streets of Amarillo, Texas from 1880 to 1887.â
Mr. Markus wrung his hands. âDominick Dalesandro, why do you have this absurd fascination with the Old West?â
Absurd? I couldnât believe what I was hearing. Mr. Markus was a teacherâa man of learning. Why couldnât he appreciate one of the most interesting and exciting periods of American history? I would need to set him straight.
âSir, Iâve read countless books on the taming of the Old West. Before there were sheriffs and marshals and deputies, the territory was lawless. These selfless individuals put their own lives on the line so that decent, hard-working Americans could live in peace. How can we not admire each one of them?â
Mr. Marcus shook his head. âWeâre not getting anywhere, Iâm afraid.â He handed me my essay.
I glanced at itâa C+. The man had given me a C+. Just because he had never pretended to be a cowboy when he was a kid, he took it out on me. I bit my lip and walked to the door.
âDominick, I can only hope your seventh-grade teacher will be able to get through to you. Have a good summer.â
Yeah, and I hope my new seventh-grade teacher will be a little more open-minded. I walked into the hallway and spotted my best bud, Will Hansen, waiting for me at my locker.
âSo, what was that all about?â he said.
âMr. Marcus had a problem with my most influential person.â
âWhoâd you pick?â
âAmos Lone Wolf Malone.â
He laughed. âDom, youâre too much.â
âWhat is that supposed to mean?â
âThe cowboy thing. The Wild West business. Dude, you gotta let it go.â
âCan I help it if Iâm interested in those things?â
âInterested?!â he said. âMore like obsessed.â
I rolled my eyes. I opened my locker and started shoveling everything into a pillowcase my mom had given me. When it appeared that I had packed up everything, I started to close the locker when Will stopped me.
âDonât forget that,â he said, pointing.
Will was referring to a long magnet stuck to the inside of the locker door that I used to hold up my class schedule.
âThanks,â I said. I slid the magnet into my pocket. I slammed the locker shut and sighed. âWill, I just canât help myself. Youâre right. I am obsessed with the Wild West. Itâs all I think about. Itâs all I watch on TV. Itâs all I read. Itâs all I search on the internet. I feel like I was born a hundred and fifty years too late. I belong in the Old West.â
âOh, really?â He smiled. âThe Old West, huh? Okay, hereâs what youâre looking at.â He counted them off on each finger. âNo cell phones. No internet. No electricity. No air conditioning. No cars. And the big oneâno indoor plumbing.â
âYeah, okay, I get that. But if we all lived in the Old West, we wouldnât know what we were missing. None of that stuff had been invented yet.â
âAll Iâm saying is that it was a pretty tough life back then. And if you had the chance, I donât see you trading places with anyone who lives in a wooden shack with a dirt floor and no heat.â
âAre you kidding?!â I said. âIâd trade in a heartbeat.â
âYou say that now, but when it comes right down to it, youâd never choose that life, and we both know it.â
âWill, youâre my best friend. I donât want to argue with you. Letâs put this discussion on hold and return to it at a later date.â
âWhatever. But youâll never change. On the other hand, a healthy interest in the past isnât a bad thing. Take me, Iâm fascinated with the battles of World War II, but at least thatâs something youâd find in history books. Who has ever heard of Amos Lone Wolf Malone? No one.â
I had to admitâtoday had actually been a pretty typical day. I had argued with my teacher and with my best friend. And it always seemed to be about my interestâmake that my passionâor rather my obsession, I guessâfor the Old West. When I tell people I would love to have lived back then, most of them think Iâm a little crazy. And they always said the same things. Who in his right mind would ever give up the conveniences of today to live on hot, dusty prairies back in the 1800s?
I would. But apparently, I was the only person who would. Give me a ten-gallon hat, a pair of boots, some spurs, chaps, a bedroll, and a horse, and I was a happy camper. Why couldnât anyone else see how exciting life was back then? I was getting tired of defending my position. I would just have to accept the fact that I was different than most people. There, I said it. That wasnât too painful. I assumed there werenât too many other twelve-year-olds who thought like me. And that was perfectly fine. I really didnât mind being the odd man out.
Will and I walked together for a while until we split off and each headed home. When I got there, I found my mom in the kitchen baking bread. To me, this was a normal thing. But apparently very few people still baked their own bread these days. If they wanted Italian bread, theyâd just go to the supermarket or to a bakery. Not in our house. My mom grew up in a home where the aroma of fresh baked bread was commonplace. And my dad was lucky she did. He refused to eat storebought bread. I used to beg my mom to buy a loaf of American bread from the supermarket. I wore her down one day and she bought some. It was the first time and the last time she did. When she set it out at the dinner table, my dad grabbed a piece of it and rolled it into aball.
âDo you expect me to eat this?â he said. âItâs dough!â âSorry, Dominick,â my mom said. âI told you.â âDid you put your mother up to this?â he said to me.
âDad, at school, everyone brings sandwiches made from this kind of bread. They donât complain. They like it just fine.â
âThey donât know what theyâre missing,â he said. âYou just give them a piece of Italian bread with the hard crust.â He laughed. âTheyâll never buy that store-bought garbage again.â
And so, as I passed through the kitchen on my way into the living room and upstairs to my room, I snatched a piece of warm homemade bread off the counter and stuffed it into my mouth. As I was chewing, I started thinking about the Old West again. I suddenly realized that a lot of ranchers and farmers who lived back in the 1800s lived on homemade bread. I was actually getting a taste of frontier living without knowing it. I decided at that very moment never to complain about my momâs homemade Italian bread for as long as I lived. She was preparing me for life in the Wild West if I ever somehow made it back there.
I removed the books, notebooks, and school supplies from the pillowcase and tossed them in my closet. I had three months before Iâd have to worry about them again. âDominick?â
I heard my momâs voice at the stairs.
âYeah.â
âDonât forget you have a haircut at three oâclock. You should be leaving right now.â
âOkay.â I had completely forgotten. I ran downstairs, flew out the back door, and into the garage. I hopped on my bike and was on my way. It would take me no more than ten minutes to get there. A little while later, I pulled up in front of Tonyâs Hair Salon and Spa on Grand Avenue. Not long ago, the name of the shop was Tony the Barber. He had changed the name with the hopes of attracting new businessâa younger clientele perhapsâbut every time I was there, I would always see the same old men sitting around shooting the breeze.
When I walked in, I waved to Tony and took a seat. Tony was a likable sort. He was nearing eighty but still going strong. He had cut my dadâs hair since he was a boy, so he naturally became my barber. Even at his advanced age, he was still pretty sharp. There appeared to be one more person in front of me. I decided to look for something to read to kill the time. I began searching for one particular book. I went from rack to rack looking for it. Not here. Not there.
Where the heck was it?
âWhat are you looking for, Dominick?â Tony asked.
âYou know, that one book I always read.â
Tony scratched the top of his head. âOh, that one. Itâs on that little table against the wall. Itâs on the bottom under all the others. Youâre the only one who ever reads it.â
âThanks.â I scooted over, dug under a bunch of coffee table books, and finally found it. Yes! Famous Lawmen of the Old West by Bill OâKeefe. I immediately went to page 178. And there he wasâ Amos Lone Wolf Malone. I couldnât get enough of this guy. I couldnât ever remember reading one bad thing about him. Everyone seemed to love Sheriff Malone. He cleaned up towns wherever he went. His last assignment was sheriff of Abilene, Kansas. He ran the town for nearly twenty-two yearsâŚbefore his untimely death at the age of fifty-nine.
Sheriff Malone liked to wind down each day with a friendly game of poker at the Ranchview Saloon. One particular night a man by the name of Moses Tanahill, who had been drinking heavily, sat down at the table. He proceeded to lose large amounts of money, while the sheriff was on a winning streak. This didnât sit well with the gambler. Sheriff Malone suggested the man quit playing to cut his losses. He even offered him money for breakfast the next day. The gambler grudgingly accepted his charity. The next night the sheriff walked into the saloon to play cards. Lone Wolf always liked to sit with his back to the wall so he could see whoever might be entering the saloon. But that night the only seat open was a chair facing away from the door. He asked a couple of players to switch seats with him, but both refused. He reluctantly sat down at the open seat. Moments later, without warning, Tanahill rushed in and shot Sheriff Malone. It was the last game of poker he ever played.
I canât tell you how many times Iâve read that passage. And every time, I find myself feeling just awful. It just wasnât fair. The townâfor that matter, the territoryâlost one of the best men to have ever roamed the plains of Kansas. I wished I could have been there to have warned the sheriff. Every time I start daydreaming about that night, I see myself sitting at a table near the action, spotting the reckless gunman, and yelling out to Sheriff Malone. But there was no one there to warn him. Over time, the cards the sheriff was holding that night became known as the Dead Manâs Handâ two aces and two eights.
Sheriff Amos Lone Wolf Malone was a legend in the Kansas territory. I canât tell you how many times he broke up gunfights before they led to someoneâs death. He avoided using a gun whenever possible. Half the time he walked the streets of Abilene without carrying one. He believed that most people could be set on a straight and narrow path with mercy and compassion. I canât tell you how many would-be criminals were saved by this kind and noble sheriff. And Lone Wolf was a friend to many of the Native American tribes in Kansas. He even spoke Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Pawnee. When others wanted to strip the lands away from these tribes and banish them to a reservation, it was Amos Malone who defended these early Americans. He took the position that these tribes were the rightful owners of the lands they settled, and claim jumpers had no business running them off. As you might guess, this was not a very popular position in those days.
âDominick?â Tony said. âItâs your turn. You can bring the book with you if you like.â
Startled, I jumped up and hopped into Tonyâs chair. âSorry, I was caught up in something.â
âI could tell,â he said. âSo, why donât you tell me all about Lone
Wolf Malone. I know youâre dying to.â
âI canât believe you remembered his name.â
Tony laughed. âFor as many times as youâve told me about that sheriff, how could I forget?â
For the next half hour, I told Tony about the greatest lawman in the history of the Old West. Even though he had heard this story countless times, he pretended like it was the first time.
âYou know,â he said, âlast week the wife and I were in here cleaning out old magazines and books. She pulled out the one
youâre holding and asked me if we should get rid of it.â âPerish the thought,â I said.
âI told her that a very special client, one Dominick Dalesandro, would be heartbroken if we were to get rid of that book.â âApparently, she took your advice,â I said.
âShe did, but it took me a little while to convince her.â
âThanks, Tony. I donât know what Iâd have done if you had gotten rid of it.â
âDonât worry,â he said. âAs long as youâre a customer, Famous Lawmen of the Old West will always be in my collection of reading material.â
That was what I loved about Tony. He was the best.
John Madormo's The Abilene Kid - Dead Man's Hand is a rip-roaring blend of historical fiction and time-travel adventure, perfectly suited for children who enjoy the Wild West. Dominick, age twelve, wishing to be transported back to 1888 Abilene to be an apprentice to Sheriff Malone, is a powerful hook. The author brings out the grimness and dangers of the era, beautifully describing dusty backstreets, shoot-outs, and the ever-present threat of violence.
John Madormo employs the exciting plot well, topping it off with character development. Pete Moss (Dominick's alias) is not a passive spectator; he is an active participant in the happenings as they develop, obligated to make difficult choices that can have disastrous results. The then-moral conundrum of rescuing the kidnapped children or rescuing the sheriff from death is one of the finest moral conundrums with which to involve the intended audience.
While the premise is interesting, the tale is occasionally rushed. A couple of the plot twists are not adequately developed. The relationships between the characters, particularly Pete and the sheriff, require further development in order for the reader to form a greater emotional connection. Pacing is generally interesting, but it becomes disjointed at points and some scenes do not feel as effective as they could have been.
Despite these minor flaws, The Abilene Kid - Dead Man's Hand is a thoroughly enjoyable read. The time-travel premise is integrated into the Wild West setting with ease to create an entertaining and interesting story. The suspense of the adventure is exciting, the suspense is wonderful, and the ethical questions add depth to the narrative. Teen readers who enjoy historical fiction, adventure books, and fantasy will like this as a nice and satisfying book. It is a good start to what could be a fascinating series. If John decided to write more in the series, I would be more than happy to read and review them.