A former Russian assassin using the alias Nick Deveraux has become a mysterious American hero but is kept under wraps following his spectacular capture. The FBI releases him after two years, right into the hands of the Russian mob. He is coerced to complete his former assignment — kill the Senate’s last moderate conservative, Harriet Gayfeather of Kansas. He finds himself caught between the twin grindstones of oil money and religious power and becomes oddly aligned with both the senator’s deputy and a woman who has made herself regionally famous by promising to kill an unidentified person in Kansas. "Leon Unruh writes about secret agents and assassins like the second coming of John le Carré, but his true subject is Kansas-the good, the bad, and (yes) the ugly of it. With Saltwood , the second of his Nick Deveraux novels, Unruh gives us guns in mega churches, a Russian hitman, and a United States senator bought by Big Oil, but that's only half of it. We also get Kellogg and Douglas, the dwindling Arkansas, the shocking (and endangered) beauty of Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. Reading this book, I saw the people and the land I love in a strange and fascinating new light. I couldn't put it down." -Robert Rebein, author of The Last Rancher "Nick Deveraux, aka Nikolai Fyodorov, is a dichotomy, a Russian/American assassin with scruples. His target is a United States senator from Kansas, and his orders are: kill or be killed. He becomes the senator's bodyguard instead. But an explosion at an oil rig leads Nick to question the morals and motives of a cast of characters, including the senator and himself. Unruh's tale of suspense keeps the reader guessing. Who's the villain? Who's the victim?" -Michael D. Graves, author of Human Shadow, a Pete Stone mystery "I love Leon Unruh's SALTWOOD for the same reason I love his previous, related novel DOG OF THE AFTERWORLD: In terms of craft, he delivers everything you want from a thriller. I dare you not to be fully invested from the very first page in who these people are and where things are headed. But then Unruh, a longtime journalist, brings art and a sophisticated understanding of the world to the proceedings. There's nothing cookie-cutter about this novel. It's a deep, absorbing, kinetic read, featuring a main character-a former Russian assassin now named Nick Devereaux-trying to navigate American culture. It's hard for Nick. It's hard for all of us. And yet, this journey satisfies." -Craig Lancaster, two-time High Plains Book Award winner Kansas native Leon Unruh is the author of Dog of the Afterworld, the first book in this series. He was an editor at newspapers in Austin and Dallas, Texas; Wichita, Kansas; and Anchorage, Alaska. He was later the editor at the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.