In his most ambitious work yet, New York Times bestseller James Lee
Burke tells a classic American story through one man's unforgettable
life.
In 1934, sixteen-year-old Weldon Avery Holland happens upon infamous
criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow after one of their notorious
armed robberies. A confrontation with the outlaws ends with Weldon
firing a gun, unsure whether it hit its mark.
Ten years later, Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland barely survives the
Battle of the Bulge, in the process saving the lives of his sergeant,
Hershel Pine, and a young Spanish prisoner of war, Rosita Lowenstein--a
woman who holds the same romantic power over him as the strawberry
blonde Bonnie Parker, and is equally mysterious. The three return to
Texas where Weldon and Hershel get in on the ground floor of the nascent
oil business.
In just a few years' time Weldon will spar with the jackals of the
industry, rub shoulders with dangerous men, and win and lose fortunes
twice over. But it is the prospect of losing his one true love that will
spur his most reckless act yet--one inspired by that encounter long ago
with the outlaws of his youth.
A tender love story and pulse-pounding thriller, Wayfaring Stranger
"is a sprawling historical epic full of courage and loyalty and optimism
and good-heartedness that reads like an ode to the American Dream"
(Benjamin Percy, Poets & Writers).
