It's been a long time since there's been such a plain-and-simple, head-over-heels love story as this one. It's about a good girl who falls so in love with a bad boy that she forsakes everything to ride with him -- outlaw and fugitive that he is. Lily DeLony, fifteen, tells her very one-sided version of what happened on Christmas Eve night 1883 in the town of McDade, Texas, when a vigilante group made up of ordinary citizens struck against a gang of outlaws. One of the outlaw gang was the love of young Lily's life. One of the vigilantes was her father. The DeLony family is churchgoing, Godfearing, hardworking, controlled. The father's word is law and is seldom spoken softly. But Lily was raised to meet the challenge of hard work. She's a strong, upright girl who knows the rules of virtue and righteousness. And follows them. Follows them, that is, until she meets Marion "Shot" Beatty, youngest of the Beatty brothers. By the end of the story, Lily has forsaken all that for the love of Shot Beatty and an unknown future -- one that includes a pistol in Lily's skirt pocket. Lily's telling of this tale is characterized by her spirit, her will, her fearlessness, and the endearing gullibility of youth. Utterly convincing, utterly beguiling, LILY introduces a wonderful new writer with an ear for a certain kind of voice not heard so clearly since Charles Portis's TRUE GRIT. "Based on the real life lynching of an outlaw gang in 1880s Texas, Lily is the story of how love for outlaw Marion Beatty takes good girl Lily DeLony from daddy's girl to gunman's girl. Told in Lily's simple, country-girl voice, this novel is reminiscent of the best of Larry McMurtry's early fiction. Cindy Bonner writes clearly and perceptively about young love and the lost world of the hardscrabble frontier." - The Kansas City Star "The men shoot first, think later; Lily loves first, thinks later. She tells us what she's feeling in vivid, down-home language." - Charlotte Observer "Bonner credibly conveys her heroine's sincerity, bravery and naïveté as well as rugged Marion's charming-yet-dangerous persona. Even readers who ordinarily shun shoot-'em-up, rough-and-ready novels will sympathize with the lovers and become caught up in this exciting story." - Publishers Weekly "Soon as we cleared the trees, the whole town was spread before us. The bank first, then Bassisst's drugstore, the barber shop, Billingsley's store, the beef market, and the rock saloon, all joined in a row and connected one to the other by walls and a long gallery in front. And across Main from all these buildings, in the meadow between the tracks and town, grew the spreading limb oak tree where three pieces of rope hung like heavy, chopped-off vines. When the wheels of the buggy hit the railroad tracks, I nearly bounced off the seat, for my attention was dead on that tree." - excerpted from LILY It's been a long time since there's been such a plain-and-simple, head-over-heels love story as this one. It's about a good girl who falls so in love with a bad boy that she forsakes everything to ride with him - outlaw and fugitive that he is. Lily DeLony is the properly brought-up daughter of hardworking, God-fearing, firm-as-a-rock father. Marion "Shot" Beatty is the youngest of the infamous Beatty brothers gang, the terror of McDade, Texas, in the year 1883. The odds are against them ever meeting, but they do. The odds are against her ever heeding his honey-sweet tongue, but she does. What happens when they defy all odds to come together makes for the most heart-wrenching, exuberant novel of love made fresh and the wild West made new that you have ever read. This 30th Anniversary Edition of the LA Times bestseller is packaged in an all-new cover design, and freshly styled inside text. But it's the same spellbinding story you loved in 1992. Author of five literary novel, Cindy Bonner was born in Corpus Christi, Texas and writes of her native Texas with accuracy and clarity of voice. Her novels have won many awards and accolades, including Best Book by the American Library Association and the PEN/Texas Award.