JAKE HARWOOD

Cover Blurb

By

Harvey Mendez

            Jake Harwood, a burned-out former marshal, whose wife left him, rides west on his way to California. In the New Mexico desert, he happens upon an overturned stagecoach after an Apache attack. He rescues seductive Jessica Raymond, the sole survivor, half-buried beneath the stage. She is from New Orleans where she escaped from Blackie LeFont, a shrewd gambler, who killed her father.

 Jessica talks Jake into taking her to California. Along the way, Maco, a fierce Chiricahua Apache, named after Geronimo’s grandfather, captures them. He has already stolen Susan Blackhawk, a beautiful half-Cheyenne, half-French maiden, from the Comanches.  Apaches, Mexicans, and Comanches fight over the women and capture them for their own. Jake, Blackie, and Maco, in turn, try to free them, but are badly wounded.

            Which man will recover to end up with Jessica or Susan Blackhawk? Will Jake ever make it to California?

I began writing out of boredom. I was stuck in a dving bell in the middle of the north sea for 47 days. Having read every bookon the rig I decided to write my own. It was a smugglers tale and it was rubbish.

When I came ashore I joined a writers group and decided to learn how to construct a story.

In 1974 I found an agent and sold three plays for TV and was well into my first novel when divorce interupted proceding. I moved abroad and lost contact withmy agent, but continued to write and had five books in various stages of completion.

I retired in 2005 and moved to Mallorca in 2009 where I was asked to start a writers group. The enthusiasm of my members gave me the incentive to look at some of my own work and I have completed and published three novels, had articles published in the island press and will be shortly doing aninterview to promote my books here on TV.

'Dead Men Make The Best Heroes' is set at the time of the Arab Israeli conflict in 1974 it is my take on war, there are no winners.

Transported for life' is set in 1789 at the time of the first transportation fleet to Australia and follows the lives of a young serving girl who is accused of theft and sentenced to hang. By changng places with another prisoner who has died she assumes her name and sentence which is to be Transported for Life.

Lost to the sea' |Book 1. Orphaned; Apprenticed; Pressed & Prized; is the first in a series of sea stories following the life of an orphan who loses his entire family and is taken in and educated by the church. Apprenticed to a shippng master he is pressganged and put to serve on a sloop of war.

 Lost to the sea' Book 2. Letters of Marque.' is the second in the series and covers the rescue attempt of his old captain from pirates.

I cazlss myself as a storyteller in the old style and deloberately sert out to entertain and engage my reader in another world. Hopefully I succeed.