A.Z. Hays’ novel ‘Zephyr’ available in early July

FAR WEST TEXAS – A.Z. Hays’ new novel, Zephyr, number two in the Big Bend Series, follows his 2011 work, The Last Peace Officer, just in time for summer vacation.

Zephyr is a tale of adventure, drama and romance that begins during the Comanche days in the Texas Big Bend, then flows toward the modern epoch where the story tarries for almost six years until a tragic incident takes place. That event necessitates Rick Donavan’s lifelong departure from the Americas.

A breeze from the west, a Zephyr, like a nudge on a windward passage, and a man’s strange destiny that leaves him on the run.

Book cover

Nudge had turned to shove across the Southern Plaines of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Comanches and Apaches fought for horses, territory, slaves and scalps. By the 19^th century, the governor of Chihuahua cut deals with renegades like the Irish-American-Mexican James “Santiago” Kirker to curtail violent Indian raids. The game was, and today remains, survival in order to overcome the past and alter the context of a borderlands environment.

With The Great War in Europe concluding in 1918, the adventurous Richard D. Donavan, a New Yorker by birth, settles down as a Texas-Mexico border resident by choice. Racism, violence, and the nonsense of Prohibition destroy Rick’s peace. When he chooses to avenge the brutal murder of his beautiful wife Alicia that their daughter Vera has witnessed, he makes a heart rendering second choice: He must leave everything behind, including Vera, who will be reared by her maternal grandparents. Where he is going, she cannot follow, from Mexico, to Europe, then Casablanca in French Morocco.

Time goes by. Rick has no idea how long his new alias, Richard Blaine, will safeguard him. New jobs and new friends echo shattered dreams of tormented souls sharing secrets of the past and a future full of hope. His lonely existence is full of surprises as tensions build for World War Two.

Zephry will be available early in July at Front Street Books in Alpine, Cactus Book shop in San Angelo, Morrison’s True-Value in Alpine or from the author, A.Z. “Beto” Hays.