Sam's Choice

Sam Young, a World War One veteran, takes a job as a coalfield detective, but a massacre during the 1920 labor war in Southern West Virginia causes him to seek other employment. On the way to a new security position with a commercial lumber company in remote Southwest Virginia, he meets Fame Lambert, a recent widow who owns two thousand acres of virgin, or old growth, timber. After riding three hours on a narrow gauge passenger train to a mill town, he meets his new boss, Hoss Zolar, and Bonnie, Hoss's beautiful, unmarried daughter. Sam's life becomes complicated by his love interests and, as security chief, by his conflict with Linc Lambert, a corrupt mountain politician, and his greedy son, Bobbie Joe. The Lamberts operate a house of ill repute and engage in other illegal activities. The cast of characters includes Sam's wartime buddy, Dilman Lester, a wartime sniper turned moonshiner, and Lenore, his young pregnant mountain lass he calls his "old woman." Sam's romances lead to personal growth and choices about love and duty. His detective work leads to the solving of two murders in this fresh, compelling love story in a remote timber region not yet fully into the twentieth century.