The Shadow Man

A ``mere shadow of a man'' is the way trapper Jacob Tammarron is described by the father of Petra Solis, a well-off Mexican woman he wants to marry. It's 1846, and Tammarron has abandoned his solitary life in the mountains to find a wife and become a rancher. Hardly a ``shadow,'' he earns the respect of Petra's family, and with Petra takes up residence at the fort-like hacienda of the Solis family. But the huge rancho is in New Mexico, and the U.S. is about to take the territory by force. At the same time, a Texas state senator has put in motion a plan to slaughter the region's Mexican landholders. The Solis family is destroyed while Tammarron is away, and he sets off with a Comanche brave to take revenge. Parker's eighth western (after The Far Battleground ) is superbly written and detailed. The West of the 1840s was more savage than wild, and Parker brings it to life. (Nov.)