Award-winning writer of Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey, winner of the 2020 Will Rogers Medallion Award, a 2019 Spur Award Finalist and an “Editor’s Choice” by The Historical Novel Society

A high school history teacher, Harte Canaday, is going through a divorce in his small mountain town in north Georgia. No longer living at home, he is camping in the wilderness that had been his former riding grounds as a young horseman. Because of his fascination with the Old West and his innate skill with period firearms, Harte stumbles into a shootout with drug traffickers and bests three violent men in a matter of seconds. With his best friend—the sheriff—killed in this affray, the county leaders ask Harte to take over the vacant job.

When he pins on the badge, he finds that he was born for the work, but the challenges fall in avalanches as he learns about his county’s entanglement in drug addiction, sexual coercion with minors, and murder.

These puzzle parts lead him to investigate people he has known all his life, and the secrets he uncovers take him not only into more violent face-offs but also into an unexpected hard look at what appears to be his own affinity for violence.

Praise for Mark Warren

“Woven with clarity and colorful prose, Warren leads readers on an odyssey . . .” —True West Magazine on Promised Land 

“A good book offers the ultimate escape . . . armchair travel to those wild places of the imagination. Warren’s book took me to places I had previously not expected to visit, but I’m really glad I went there. —New Zealand Booklovers on Promised Land 

"Warren's novel paints a vivid picture . . . and its colorful similes will put a smile on any genre-fiction lover's face." —Booklist on Born to the Badge