Trail of Shadows (Bee Adkins Book 2)

For a man haunted by his past, peace is the most dangerous frontier of all.

In the vast, unforgiving landscape of the early 20th-century American West, Bee Adkins is a man trying to outrun his own legend. A peerless hunter and tracker haunted by a violent past, he seeks a peaceful, quiet life. He finds a fragile hope for this new beginning in Viola, a minister’s daughter whose quiet faith seems to promise salvation. Marrying her, Bee vows to build a life of peace, trading the law of the gun for the love of a family.

But peace is a luxury few can afford when the Great Depression takes hold. Honest work is scarce, and the deadly skills that kept Bee alive on the run are once again the only ones that can feed his growing family. To protect them, he is pulled back into a world of shadows and morally grey choices, walking a razor’s edge between providing for his family and becoming the man he swore he’d left behind. The very instincts he sought to bury become his only means of survival.

Yet the most dangerous frontier isn’t in the mountains or across the border—it’s within the walls of his own home. The constant struggle and the weight of Bee’s secrets begin to take their toll, and the fragile peace they’ve built threatens to shatter. As his wife’s steadfast faith gives way to a profound and terrifying instability, Bee faces an enemy he cannot track or kill. He must make an impossible choice to protect his children, a decision that will cost him everything he has fought so hard to build.

A sweeping biographical novel set against the backdrop of a dying West, Trail of Shadows is an unflinching story of one man’s fight for family, the high cost of love, and the devastating choices a father must make when the woman he loves becomes the greatest danger to their family.