Shoe-Bar Stratton

Buck Stratton steps off a train into a town he barely recognizes. A year ago, he shipped out to war. Today, he remembers nothing of that year, not the bullet that took his memory, not the slow recovery in a hospital bed. He only knows the Shoe-Bar ranch is his, and he's coming home. But home has changed. His foreman has vanished. The ranch is now owned and operated by Mary Thorne, a woman who claims she purchased it legally while Buck lay unconscious, his inheritance caught in some bureaucratic nightmare. The cattle are being rustled, the hands are restless, and Buck doesn't know who to trust anymore. What follows is a man piecing together not just who took his land, but who he was before the war erased him. The mystery deepens with each revelation about that lost year, and the stakes rise with every rustled calf and whispered accusation. Buck must decide what he's willing to fight for, and Mary Thorne harbors secrets that could change everything. A Western with teeth, this is a story about memory, identity, and what it means to come home to a world that moved on without you.