Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Frontier Prospecting is the Latest in Mayo's "Grittiest Moments" series: Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Frontier Prospecting  offers 50 tales of hard-bitten sourdoughs, petty bandits, outright outlaws, guilt-free gunmen, and murderous money-grubbers as they scrabbled to gain the lands, foodstuffs, and fortunes of wide-eyed greenhorns, gullible and trusting tenderfoots, and slow-on-the-draw gold panners. "Mayo's Grittiest Moments books read like Loren D. Estleman and Jim Thompson got together to re-write a Stephen Ambrose history book." --Jeremy L.C. Jones, Booklifenow.com "[Mayo] is a consummate storyteller with a lively, entertaining voice.... Bootleggers, Lobstermen, and Lumberjacks is American history at its most violent and authentic." --Howard Frank Mosher, award-winning author of A Stranger in the Kingdom , Where the Rivers Flow North, and Walking to Gatlinburg "Mayo brings the West alive.... Cowboys, Mountain Men, and Grizzly Bears puts the reader right in the middle of the action, making history not only accessible, but fun, scary, and most importantly, real. Mayo is a writer to keep a lookout for." --Larry D. Sweazy, Spur Award-winner and author of The Rattlesnake Season "... I can't recommend it highly enough. The man knows the West, and, better still, knows how to tell a story." --Andrew Vietze, award-winning author of Becoming Teddy Roosevelt "An excellent variety of great stories, told in superb narrative style." --John D. Nesbitt, Spur Award-winning Western author of Trouble at the Redstone Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers! For every forthright Forty-Niner pursuing high fortune and a better life in the streambeds and rocky draws of the West, the history of prospecting the vast frontier offers up hundreds of tales of parasitical people preying on gullible greenhorns and seeking easy access to fortune and fame. The list of such precious-metal-and-gemstone-related larcenies in the Old West and the Far North is legion and long and ripe for the reading. These memorable moments are sometimes humorous, often shocking and brutal, and always all-too-true. Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers offers 50 tales of hard-bitten sourdoughs, petty bandits, outright outlaws, guilt-free gunmen, and murderous money-grubbers as they scrabbled to gain the lands, foodstuffs, and fortunes of wide-eyed greenhorns, gullible and trusting tenderfoots, and slow-on-the-draw gold panners. Matthew P. Mayo  is a Western Writers of America Spur Award Finalist and a Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award Finalist. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and his novels include the Westerns  Winters' War ,  Wrong Town ,  Hot Lead ,  Cold Heart ,  Dead Man's Ranch ,  Tucker's Reckoning ,   and he contributes to several popular series of Western and adventure novels. His non-fiction books include  Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears ;  Bootleggers, Lobstermen & Lumberjacks ;   Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers ; and   Haunted Old West .  Visit him at matthewmayo.com. Used Book in Good Condition