Stephen Harrigan

In this remarkable collection of essays, Stephen Harrigan explores, with an unfailing depth of feeling, the human longing to feel at home in the world of nature. In vivid and convincing prose, he evokes the landscape of his home territory, Texas, and his own reactions, sometimes droll, sometimes haunted, to the extraordinary power of place that Texas projects.

History-natural history, human history, and personal history-and place are the cornerstones of The Eye of the Mammoth. Stephen Harrigan's career has taken him from the Alaska Highway to the Chihuahuan Desert, from the casinos of Monaco to his ancestors' village in the Czech Republic. And now, in this new edition, he movingly recounts in "Off Course" a quest to learn all he can about his father, who died in a plane crash six months before he was born. Harrigan's...

"The novel opens in 1832 in the Black Hawk War, when Micajah (Cage) Weatherby--an imaginary character--and Lincoln meet. Afterwards Cage musters out to Springfield, Illinois, where he becomes part of the group of ambitious young men, which includes Lincoln, in this frontier town on the make. And it is through Cage that we come to know his friend Lincoln in his twenties and early thirties, the Lincoln who is already a circuit-riding lawyer and a member...

Best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings one of the pivotal battles in American history to life in this fiery, unforgettable novel. Meticulously researched and overflowing with fascinating characters, The Gates of the Alamo is an experience history buffs and fiction fans will equally enjoy. Edmund McGowan is a gifted naturalist whose life's work is threatened by war. Mary Mott is a widowed innkeeper forced to rely on her own resources for survival....

"The fragile, 1952 postwar tranquility of a five-year-old boy's world explodes one summer day when a leopard escapes from the zoo, throwing all of Oklahoma City into dangerous excitement, in this evocative story of a child's confrontation with his deepest fears. For Grady McClarty, an ever-watchful but bewildered five-year-old boy, World War II is only a troubling, ungraspable event that occurred before he was born. But he feels its effects all around...

It's 1864 and the First Michigan Cavalry is stranded in a Virginia forest, surrounded by smoldering fires and the distant cries of falling men. In the midst of this, trooper Jim Rabb's horse gives birth to a colt. Fearing the newborn will slow down the troops, the sergeant orders Rabb to shoot it. But Jim refuses and the colt becomes an omen of good fortune for the men who are marching into unknown territory. Suddenly, the camp is overrun by Confederate...

Cleopatra, the famed Egyptian Queen born in 69 B.C., is shown to have been brought by Roman ruler Julius Caesar at age 18. Caesar becomes sexually obsessed by the 18 year old queen, beds her, and eventually has a son by her.