The reality of frontier life in Kansas in 1872 becomes brutally clear to twelve-year-old Coady McIlvain when his father is scalped by hostile Indians and Coady is taken prisoner. Coady is determined to escape and does so, falling in with a buffalo sharpshooter named Dylan Griffith, whom he sees as the embodiment of his hero, Buffalo Bill Cody, a role in which the circumspect Griffith feels himself totally inadequate.
The two face real adventure surviving the unforgiving terrain with Coady's former captors on their trail and with outlaw Comancheros to be avoided.
In The Big Fifty—another name for the famous Sharps rifle—Johnny D. Boggs has created a gripping Western story with constant juxtapositions between the myths and legends created by Eastern storytellers out of the actual often brutal realities of frontier life.
Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, been bucked off horses, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He has won nine Spur Awards, making him the all-time leader in Western Writers of America’s history.
Lloyd James (a.k.a. Sean Pratt) has been narrating since 1996 and has recorded over six hundred audiobooks. He is a seven-time winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award and has twice been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award. His critically acclaimed performances include Elvis in the Morning by William F. Buckley Jr. and Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin, among others.