The Fall of Abilene

Earning the nicknames “Counting Boy,” “The Abilene Kid,” and “Abilene,” Noah survives the bloody journey to Kansas, only to learn that Abilene rightfully deserves its nickname as a Sodom or Gomorrah. In a town where anything goes, the marshal, legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok, reluctantly forms a truce with Hardin—leaving Noah caught in the middle. As summer stretches into fall, Noah finds another friend, a special deputy named Mike Williams, who tries to keep Noah from stumbling on his way to manhood.

In this well-researched historical novel, eight-time Spur Award–winning author Johnny D. Boggs chronicles Abilene’s last year as a cattle town, 1871, while humanizing Hardin and Hickok and painting sobering portraits of a city undergoing rapid change, and the never-changing challenges teenagers face on their path to adulthood.