When a great-grandson inherits two aging trunks and a stack of meticulously detailed journals penned by his great-grandfather, he sets out to fulfill his great-grandfather’s last request: to tell the story of an inconceivable life replete with adventure, violence and tragedy. The great-grandfather’s name? Billy Battles–a man often trapped and overwhelmed by circumstances beyond his control.
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For much of his 100-year-long life Billy is a man missing and largely unknown to his descendants. His great-grandson is about to change that. As he works his way through the aging journals and the other possessions he finds in the battered trunks, he uncovers the truth about his mysterious great-grandfather–a man whose deeds and misdeeds propelled him on an extraordinary and perilous journey from the untamed American West to the inscrutable Far East, Latin America and Europe.
As he flips through the pages of the handwritten journals, he learns of Billy’s surprising connections to the Spanish-American War, French Indochina, and revolutions in Mexico and other Latin American countries. But most of all, he learns that in finding Billy Battles he has also found a long lost and astonishing link to his past.
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Billy Battles lived the cowboy life Ned Buntline never dreamed existed.
Author Ronald E. Yates created a continent spanning western tale. Young Billy Battle grew up on a hardscrabble farm near Dodge City, Kansas at the peak of its cattle-drive squalor. Along the way, Billy Battle meets every lawman and a bunch of desperados in Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas and includes a visit to Lawrence Kansas (of Quantrill’s Raid fame). A family acquaintance in Lawrence knows Billy wants to cut Momma’s apron strings and suggests he work for a local newspaper that wants to open a newspaper in Dodge city. Billy’s early training in shooting rifle and pistol are a blessing and a curse. His shooting ability saves his and his publishers life but leads to trouble with folks wanting revenge. Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp (and all the Earp boys), and Doc Holiday provide plenty of story and eventually convince Billy to “Get out of Dodge.”
One jump ahead of Kansas Law, Billy goes to Denver to work at a newspaper. The newspaper editor at the request of a friend sends Billy away to write about the Gold or Silver Strike towns as a ploy to keep Billy from courting the friend’s daughter. Billy’s charmed life continues as he falls in with Doc and Wyatt in Tombstone fighting the crooked Sheriff and Ike Clanton’s gang of rustlers. Billy makes it out of Tombstone on the run and returns to Denver, where his dispatches from the field made him popular. When it looks like Billy has settled down and married with a baby on the way, the Kansas bandit who forced Billy from Dodge arrives in Denver and shoots Billy in revenge.
In true cowboy fashion, Billy survives and sets out to hunt his Kansas nemesis. Billy meets more legendary western characters and ends up back at his birthplace in Kansas for the final shootout. Billy has more lives than 3 cats and survives a head wound. With the Kansas nemesis dead and buried on the prairie, Billy returns to Denver to find he has a daughter. Fortune smiles on Billy as he garners fame as a “scribbler” and he’s off to Chicago with his wife to see the World Expo and enjoy his fame. It doesn’t end here as life deals Billy a rough hand and the family of the dead Kansas nemesis have hired Pinkerton’s to prove Billy killed him. There are 2 more books to conclude Billy Battles’ adventure.
This is an off-beat “western” told as a memoir, but it’s so well-written, it becomes an enjoyable yarn about a time gone by.
When I started reading, “Finding Billy Battles,” I didn’t anticipate that the journey with Billy Battles and some of his legendary historical friends, such as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and Bat Masterson, would be so poignant and memorable. You are first introduced to Billy Battles through the eyes of his great-grandson who knew very little about him and his ill-reputed past. However, his great-grandson sorts through aging journals and other possessions to uncover the truth about the mysterious life of his great-grandfather. The story is then told in the first person by Billy Battles who confesses that he has done some terrible things, which immediately elicited my curiosity.
Born on a frigid night in a farmhouse near Dodge City, Billy Battles loses his father in the Civil War. His mother is unable to manage the 160-acre homestead alone and thus moves Billy back to Lawrence, Kansas. There, she is determined to make sure he doesn’t turn into a “coarse and rude savage.” After attending college for a year, he is offered an opportunity to help start a newspaper in Dodge City and to check on the abandoned family farm. Billy’s life takes a dramatic turn when he and a couple of his friends finds a mother and her two, armed sons inhabiting the family farmhouse. A gunfight breaks out, and Billy inadvertently kills the mother during the shootout. The surviving son, Ned Bledsoe, vows vengeance on Billy Battles. For the next decade, Billy ventures to famous frontier towns such as Denver, Dodge City, and Tombstone where he meets famous Western persona. However, the transgression of killing Ned Bledsoe’s mother continues to haunt him, setting the stage for the next book.
Author Yates has masterfully written a historical fiction set in the backdrop of the oftentimes violent and lawless Wild West. The narrative is rich in description and history of frontier boomtowns. The dialogue stays true to the vernacular of the era. Though the tale is full of adventure and action, the characters are three-dimensional and engaging. You can fully empathize with Billy Battles as he is pulled into unfortunate circumstances that impact the decisions he makes in life.
This book is highly recommended for readers who enjoy historical tales with memorable legendary characters personifying the Old West.
We’re taken on a historic journey as Billy’s grandson inherits his grandfather’s journals. The story takes us back to Billy’s time as a young man caught between his mother’s wishes for him to attend university and his desire to strike out on his own. Offered an opportunity to work on a newspaper opening in Dodge City, Billy jumps at the chance.
Ronald’s characters are well-defined and larger-than-life. With a super plot and great attention to detail, readers are treated to Billy’s connections of many of the frontier names we’ve all heard of. The story will keep you spellbound and turning the pages late into the evening. This was the first book of Ronald’s that I’ve read and I can’t wait to begin reading book two
When I purchased this book, I realized it was a memoir of sorts. Not my kind of reading. It was also an historical–another not so fave. And I admit to going into it sort of biased. Very soon the bias went away. BIG TIME. I wish schools would replace history books with Finding Billy Battles. The characters are amazing, the plot well developed and thorough. The action is nonstop. You can’t help cheering for Billy each time he faces down the Bledsoe clan. I understand there is a sequel…