Merry’Round is R. Putnam Baker’s first of a satirical series about West Texas in the 1920s. Zany characters and misfits join the Knight family to start a cattle ranch. The Knights move from Abilene to the High Plains and settle south of Littlefield. Their tale is a cowboy’s stew of adventure seasoned with magic, mystery and a dash of murder. It is a collision of the “Old West” and the encroaching modernity brought by automobiles, towns and large-scale farming. As the last bits of a once indigenous land blow away the ghost spirits of the Comanche and the American bison remain – do they seek justice? The West Texas series is a prequel to his first novel, Valley Mothers. Mr. Baker has homes in Santa Barbara, California and Eureka in rural Northern Nevada. He considers Texas to be an adopted state after traveling its highways and back roads for over forty years with his now departed wife, Mariana Titus.