San Juan Mission

Two hundred wagons. A thousand miles of wilderness. A frozen canyon no wagon should ever cross. And one bounty hunter hired to keep the expedition alive.

The American frontier has never seen a journey like this.

When Eldridge Sample is hired to protect the San Juan expedition, he expects a difficult assignment.

He gets a nightmare.

Hundreds of pioneers, families, wagons, livestock, supplies, and church leaders are attempting to cross some of the most brutal country in the American West to establish a new settlement in the remote San Juan country.

Their route leads through frozen desert, towering sandstone canyons, raging rivers, blizzards, and the infamous Hole-in-the-Rock—a thousand-foot descent carved through the cliffs above the Colorado River.

The wilderness alone could destroy them.

But Eldridge soon discovers that the greatest danger may be inside the expedition itself.

Captain Hyrum Beck, commander of the Mormon militia, believes absolute obedience and unwavering faith will carry his people through the wilderness.

Eldridge believes in something very different.

Preparation. Mechanics. Survival.

When a wagon breaks, Eldridge sees an engineering problem.

When a canyon floods, he sees a tactical problem.

When the expedition's defenses fail, he sees a death trap.

And when Captain Beck refuses to listen, the conflict between the two men becomes almost as dangerous as the wilderness surrounding them.

Then disaster strikes.

A catastrophic flood tears through the canyon.

Supplies are destroyed.

Animals die.

Families are left freezing and starving.

And hundreds of pioneers are trapped at the bottom of the Hole-in-the-Rock with no easy way forward—and no way back.

Eldridge refuses to let the expedition die.

He rebuilds wagons.

He organizes exhausted animals into massive teams.

He salvages food from the wreckage.

He designs mechanical solutions to seemingly impossible obstacles.

And when armed men emerge from a blizzard to attack the vulnerable wagon train, Eldridge becomes the only thing standing between the settlers and annihilation.

But survival has a price.

As hunger, exhaustion, fear, and desperation tear at the expedition, Captain Beck's authority begins to fracture. The mission's funds disappear. Supplies are stolen. Mutiny threatens to erupt.

And Eldridge must finally confront the man whose decisions may destroy everything they have fought to build.

From the frozen deserts of Utah to the towering cliffs of Comb Ridge, from the deadly descent into the Colorado River canyon to the brutal struggle for survival in the San Juan Basin, SAN JUAN MISSION is a sweeping Western adventure about endurance, survival, frontier courage, and one hard-eyed bounty hunter who refuses to let an impossible journey become a mass grave.

SAN JUAN MISSION delivers cinematic Western adventure, historical Western fiction, cowboy action, frontier survival, wagon train adventure, bounty hunter fiction, Old West suspense, Mormon pioneer history, Hole-in-the-Rock adventure, Colorado River crossings, desert survival, mountain wilderness, frontier conflict, gunslingers, militia, blizzards, canyon warfare, and high-stakes Western action.

PERFECT FOR READERS WHO LOVE:

Gritty Western adventure

Full-scale wagon train stories

Cowboy and bounty hunter fiction

Historical Western thrillers

Old West survival stories

Frontier expeditions

Mormon pioneer history

Hole-in-the-Rock adventures

Colorado River and Utah Territory Westerns

Gunslingers and frontier lawmen

Wilderness survival

High-stakes Western action

Harsh desert and mountain settings

Morally complicated Western characters

The wilderness doesn't care about faith, authority, or good intentions.

It only cares whether you survive.

And if the San Juan expedition is going to reach its destination, Eldridge Sample is going to have to get them there alive.