The Gambler’s Apprentice

ISBN: 978-0-87417-998-9 

Binding: [Hardcover] 

Pages: 304 

Publication date: February 2016

$27.95

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The Gambler’s Apprentice

by H. Lee Barnes

Description

The Gambler’s Apprentice tells the story of a teenage boy growing up in Texas during desperate times. Willy, wise and ca-pable beyond his years, learns the gambler’s trade and experiences adventures that demand quick wits—and sometimes violent actions. This is a multilayered story, full of Old West motifs such as cattle-rustling and gunfights along with more modern twists. Starting with a cattle-rustling scheme involving his father, Willy embarks on a life of crime early, eventually landing in a Laredo jail for shooting a man. During his incarceration he meets Sonny Archer, an itinerant gambler, who teaches Willy how to be a cardsharp. Upon his release, Willy roams the country, honing his new talent and getting into more trouble. Dur-ing his time in New Orleans, Willy even winds up in a confrontation with an Italian crime ring. While all these adventures mold Willy into a clever card player and a masterful fortune-hunter, his grand ambition to be a professional gambler is thwarted when the influenza epidemic strikes. Willy is forced to return home to his family’s Texas ranch, where he faces the most challenging test of his young life and begins to prove that he is far more than simply an apprentice.

Reviews

“I found the reading extremely satisfying; I did not want it to end, and suspect that any reader of contemporary fiction would feel the same way.” -- Les Standiford, author of Deal with the Dead: A John Deal Mystery

“The book is dramatic, cinematic, and broad in scope. Willy Bobbins, the apprentice of the title, is a fascinating character, an illiterate who is nonetheless brilliant with numbers and odds, and on his way to becoming a master poker player. The Gambler’s Apprentice illuminates the role of Texas gamblers and oilmen in the founding of the gambling mecca of Las Vegas.” -- Lawrence Coates, author of The Goodbye House

“Except once in a blue moon, when else do you find a story packed with action and adventure involving big-as-life characters in settings and situations readymade for the silver screen? What’s more, the characters already know their lines; no script doctor is needed to improve this dialogue. Moreover, the author’s powers of description rival those of Cormac McCarthy in showing that the outback of the Tex-Mex border is no country for old men, and that even young ones age quickly there.” -- Robert Lamb, The New York Journal of Books

“Dialog out of the old school, as good as L’Amour, maybe even better.” -- The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy, and the Humanities