Cow Creek

by Richard Gehrman

Teenage boys, Emil and Able set out from Oakland, Nebraska, and travel north to experience the mysterious Indian territories and action-packed Wild West depicted in their dime novels. The plan is to become ranch hands at Cow Creek, but just two days in, Able gets injured and is forced to turn back for home. Naively, Emil forges ahead to face whatever the harsh terrain and its even harsher inhabitants are going to throw at him, eventually encountering wolves, violent storms, and the impossible decision of taking or sparing another human being's life in order to save his own.

The unthinkable cruelties of the native reservations and the struggles of a ranch trying to keep its cattle empire alive during changing times, combined with the lewd behavior Emil's innocent eyes witness on his days off, overwhelm him with a picture of the dying West that doesn't look anything like his fantasy, and instead shakes his Christian upbringing to the core.

Experience the final gasps of Indian tribes and the American West through the eyes of an impressionable, fifteen-year-old boy looking for adventure but instead finding adulthood. It explores many unfortunate circumstances that, though originating in the nineteenth century, still persist today.

310 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2014

About the author

Richard Gehrman was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. His childhood was filled with playing along the banks and bluffs of the Missouri River and hunting game with his father. He has continued to hunt for nearly fifty years in the hills west of Winnebago, and they have inspired much of the landscape for his novel, Cow Creek. Growing up in the fifties, he took in all of the radio and television Westerns and owes much of his vivid imagination to radio programs and books.

Gehrman studied engineering at the University of Omaha, while also filling his electives with public speaking and creative writing courses. Through marriage, owning and operating a construction company, raising three children, and breeding champion dogs and Toggenburg dairy goats, he never stopped writing. Until now, his published works include articles in dog and dairy goat periodicals as well as public-pulse pieces in local newspapers.

Reviews

[David]

Cow Creek is a story set in Northeast Nebraska near the end of the 19th century. The story is told through the eyes of Emil Nelson when he was a teenager on the farm and got the chance of a lifetime to be a cowboy during the summer at a ranch to the north of Oakland near the Winnebago Indian Reservation.

Emil's summer is not an easy one and some of the tragedies he dealt with likely scarred him for life.

This is a most enjoyable trip back in time and since I grew up in Oakland and was very familiar with Winnebago, it was of special interest to me. I would recommend this to any fan of the history of the wild west or someone from this part of Nebraska.