Harold Burton Meyers revisits his pioneer roots in A Hero of Brag, a family saga that sweeps from Civil War Mississippi to the plains of early 20th-century Texas.

Family founder Amos Gower enlists in the Confederate Army at 15. His war dismal and brief, he finds himslf son-in-law to a dead officer whose heroism he brags on as his own. Becoming a West Texas rancher-and patriarch of a tumultuous progeny-Amos blames a curse from the bank robber whose hanging he botches for his reversal of fortune. Fearing "posterity's verdict on a life he had lost track of, his own," Amos hears from his wife that he's just "A Hero of Brag."

This perceptive, beautifully written novel by the author of the National Novella Award-winning Geronimo's Ponies brings post-Civil War Texas to life.