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The Big Fifty by Johnny D. Boggs
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The Big Fifty

$12.56

Retail price: $13.95

Discount: 9%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Lloyd James

This audiobook uses AI narration.

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Length 6 hours 36 minutes
Language English
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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 eight Spur Awards, making him the all-time leader in Western Writers of America’s history.

Lloyd James has been narrating since 1996, has recorded over six hundred books in almost every genre, has earned six AudioFile Earphones Awards, and is a two-time nominee for the prestigious Audie Award. His bestselling and most critically acclaimed performances include Elvis in the Morning by William F. Buckley, Jr., Ben Hur by Lew Wallace, Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitskin, and Mystic Warrior by Tracy and Laura Hickman. Lloyd's background as a performer includes extensive work in classical theater and folk music. He lives in Maryland with his wife and children.

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Reviews

“Sombreros off to as feisty a young gent as any Dickens’ character in a rousing Western.” 

“Boggs has a keen ability to interlace historically accurate information amid a cast of well descriptive characters and circumstances.”

“The contrast between the fictional world of the dime novels and the harsh reality of the true West provides a fascinating backdrop for this tale of lifelong friendship and surrogate fatherhood.”

“[A] rattling good yarn that is underlain by the calculated attempt to subdue the Plains Indian by destroying the buffalo…I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.”

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Celebrate indie bookstores with our limited-time sale! Shop the sale