Last Reveille

Book excerpt: In 1916, Mexican bandit Pancho Villa raided the southwestern border town of Columbus. Three hundred American soldiers fought four hundred attackers in a battle that ended with one of the last cavalry charges in U.S. history. Outraged, Congress ordered the U.S. Army to invade Mexico in pursuit of Villa. For the first time, trucks and airplanes accompanied U. S. cavalry into combat, practicing for America’s entry into World War I. Influenced by Sam Peckinpah, Rambo-creator David Morrell dramatizes this epic era in American history through the eyes of a civilian scout old enough to have been in the Civil War, the Indian wars, Cuba, and the Philippines. Knowing that his ways are finished, he teaches a young recruit about the past, at a cost he never expected to pay. For this special 35th anniversary e-book edition, the author revised the original text. "David Morrell’s LAST REVEILLE is back in a newly revised—even better—version than when it first appeared in 1977. Featuring two of Morrell’s greatest characters, the green kid Prentice and the John Wayne-like Miles Calendar, LAST REVEILLE is an exciting, well-researched account of ‘Black Jack’ Pershing’s 1916 expedition after Pancho Villa. It’s a cinematic, end-of-the-west epic, but also a gripping, moving character study told by a true master.” —Johnny D. Boggs, four-time Spur Award winning author of NORTHFIELD, former president of Western Writers of America “Seldom has action been so breathlessly described . . . Rousing and moving . . . an exciting novel in hard, crackling prose.” —Houston Chronicle “The action has a glory about it.” —Kirkus