Book excerpt: After losing his family, a young man saddles up on quest for justice—or revenge—in this Western by the award-winning actor and author of Pursuit. Life, not death, drove Jubal Young, but memories of his ma and pa, and his beautiful, bright sister are all he has left. Memories of the peaceful days before Jubal stumbled home with his .22, his blood running cold with fear, terror, and anger. When it was over, the homestead was half burned to the ground. Someone had to bury the bodies. Someone had to set things right. Now, as Jubal rides west into New Mexico, he remembers his family’s laughter and love, his pa’s wisdom, ma’s thick books, and everything that was defiled by a band of drunken renegades towed along by one man’s murderous grudge. A reprobate lawman won’t believe his story. A soft-hearted mountain man won’t survive Jubal’s one-man war. And a judge and his beautiful daughter cannot stop Jubal from climbing a peak of blood and madness: for justice, or payback, or something he can live for—or die for—redeeming . . . An American film icon delivers a great American novel with Payback at Morning Peak. Gene Hackman, whose fiction is “rousing” (Publishers Weekly) and “robust” (Winston-Salem Journal), takes readers on a powerful and historically dead-on western odyssey in the tradition of Louis L’Amour. Praise for Payback at Morning Peak “A worthy contribution to the Western genre. . . . A satisfying revenge tale. . . . Riding a trail of his own making, Hackman takes hold of the reins with confidence.” —Douglass K. Daniel, author of Anne Bancroft: A Life