Novel -”Where the Paintbrush Blooms” by Margaret Snyder New

A little background information on the author, Margaret Snyder New:

In 1924, Margaret Etta New was born at home in the small dusty West Texas town of Seymour, Texas. All her life, she has traveled the globe, loved her family, gardened and studied works of great literature unwaveringly. At an early age she began creating and writing stories and, as well as producing a much-coveted collection of oil paintings. In Where the Paintbrush Blooms, she tells a tale of rugged tenacity and resilience, very like the Texan she is and those she grew up around. Each page of this novel is infused with pathos and tenderness for the tough, rough-hewn lives of the Texas Rangers and those they tried to protect. And, yet it is written with the steady hand of one who might have lived it and had to tell it right. Margaret Etta New is a marvelous writer, mother, artist, and storyteller. On December 4, 2009, she passed away in Winston-Salem, North Carolina just eight days short of reaching 85 years old.

About the book:

“Where the Paintbrush Blooms” aims to honor the people and events of a vanishing age, those who settled the Texas frontier. It is a uniquely American story of the Wild West, set in the violent era immediately following the Civil War. The story focuses on two men: Sam Dawson, a Texas Ranger Captain, who is called upon to form a company of Texas Rangers to defend the settlers; and Thomas Carlton, Dawson’s best friend, who’s biggest dream is to own a small town newspaper and be a writer. Together, the two must not only survive the brutal life of the Texas frontier, they must endure personal tragedies, investigate the murder of one of the territory’s most powerful and ruthless landowners, Russell Bloodworth, and still, somehow, emerge as heroes of the American West.