Payback at Morning Peak: A Novel of the American West

Gene Hackman

Jun 2011 · Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

LIFE, NOT DEATH, DROVE JUBAL YOUNG . . . but memories of his ma and pa, and his beautiful, bright sister are all he has left. Memories of the peaceful days before Jubal stumbled home with his .22, his blood running cold with fear, terror, and anger. When it was over, the homestead was half burned to the ground. Someone had to bury the bodies. Someone had to set things right.

Now, as Jubal rides west into New Mexico, he remembers his family’s laughter and love, his pa’s wisdom, ma’s thick books, and everything that was defiled by a band of drunken renegades towed along by one man’s murderous grudge. A reprobate lawman won’t believe his story. A soft-hearted mountain man won’t survive Jubal’s one-man war. And a judge and his beautiful daughter cannot stop Jubal from climbing a peak of blood and madness: for justice, or payback, or something he can live for—or die for—redeeming.

An American film icon delivers a great American novel with Payback at Morning Peak. Gene Hackman, whose fiction is “rousing” (Publishers Weekly) and “robust” (Winston-Salem Journal), takes readers on a powerful and historically dead-on western odyssey in the tradition of Louis L’Amour.

Ratings and reviews

I loved this book. It would be a great read for a teenage boy as well. The characters pulled me in, I sure wish it had a sequel.

Best Author, Great Actor. Thanks Gene.

About the author

Gene Hackman is the author of two novels and coauthor of three other novels. He is a two-time Academy Award–winning actor with lauded performances in such films as Unforgiven, Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, Mississippi Burning, and The Poseidon Adventure, among others. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and two German shepherds.