Female Gunslingers Once Upon A Time In the West

This is a Leonberger blog but sometimes I post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that are books that I love, and I want to promote. This is another one of those. I recently read “When Cottonfields Burn” Paperback – by Sara Flower Kjeldsen. Below I am giving an overview of the two formats for the book.

  • Paperback –  Publisher : Independently published (October 29, 2023), ASIN : B0CM1KZSGM, ISBN-13 :  979-8865779650, 173 pages, Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.5 ounces, dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.39 x 9 inches, it cost $11.99 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
  • Kindle – Publisher : Independently published (October 28, 2023), ASIN : B0CM1PDNN8, 175 pages. It is currently 2.99 on Amazon.com and free with Kindle Unlimited. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
The title and author and a picture of burning cottonfields.
Front cover of  When Cottonfields Burn. Click here or the picture to visit the Amazon.com page for the paperback version of the book.

Amazon’s description of the book

A seasoned female outlaw.

Two young partners who stick with their leader no matter what.

Lydia is an outlaw who steals for a living. When she discovers that her daughter has been kidnapped by her ex-master, she and her two partners, Crow and Tyke, ride south to save the young girl. When she runs into her old friend, Mary, who was once an outlaw but is now settled down on a farm, she can’t resist forcefully bringing her along. After the shock wears off from being kidnapped, Mary pledges to help Lydia get her daughter back. The group rides to Arkansas where a battle on a cotton plantation awaits – and many unsavoury characters along the way.

When Cotton Fields Burn is a tale of adventure, betrayal, revenge, redemption, and unbreakable bonds between people who love each other.

This is my five-star review for When Cottonfields Burn by Sara Flower Kjeldsen

Gunfights for Freedom

I should say I read the paperback version of this book. This gripping and captivating story takes place at the end of the 19th century. Lydia a former slave and an outlaw discovers that her daughter has been kidnapped and illegally made into a slave by her former slave master. Lydia and her young companions Tyke and Crow assemble a team with the goal of freeing her daughter. I can add that illegal slavery was a practice that was prevalent after the civil war, and I did not know anything about it before reading this book. Therefore, I looked it up and I read more about it. I learned something about another dark chapter of history.

This book features a few characters from the first book in the series, The Broken & Foolish, which is also a great book. I was already familiar with these characters, especially Mary, but they were introduced well enough in this book. You can read this book without reading the first book. I can add that Lydia (and Mary) are both very skilled gunslingers and so are their companions. The book features a lot of violence and shootouts, many people die, but it is a Western after all, a somewhat feminist Western.

There are many intense and exciting situations. The story is fast paced but the character development is thorough, and it is easy to empathize with Lydia, Mary and the other protagonists. I think the book highlighted the fact that for many African Americans the end of slavery was not really the end of it, as I had thought. It brings attention to the evils of injustice and racism in the 19th century. At the same time, it is a hopeful book and an inspiration for standing up for yourself when you are being mistreated and justice is not coming to your aid. I highly recommend this captivating, fun, and fast paced book.

Photo of Sara Flower Kjeldsen and the text of the Amazon description of the book.
Back cover of  When Cottonfields Burn. Click here or the picture to visit the Amazon.com page for the kindle version of the book.

About Sara Flower Kjeldsen

Sara is a Canadian multi-genre author who loves tea and adventures. This is a list of her published books.

To read my review for the first book in the series; The Broken and the Foolish Click Here.

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

26 thoughts on “Female Gunslingers Once Upon A Time In the West”

  9. Lulu: “Our Dada likes a good Western! And he especially likes a weird Western, like The Half-Made World or Six Gun Snow White!”
    Charlee: “In fact his first story to get published was a weird Western! His cousin always said he should write an expanded version of that one, but of course he never did.”

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    1. Lulu I have to admit I had not heard of The Half-Made World or Six Gun Snow White!” so I looked them up. They are indeed different style westerns. They seem to be fantasy and the first one steampunk. Charlee what is the name of your Dada’s Western?

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          1. Oh that was over 30 years ago now, I think, and the publication in which it appeared has long since folded. I doubt you could find it anywhere other than the copy I have on my shelf here! 😁

            Funny story about “The Short Route”: When I registered to go to the World Horror Convention in 1997 I checked off the box that said I was interested in author readings, thinking it was like a “Do you want to listen to authors reading their stories?”, when actually what it meant was I was signing up to give a reading, which I discovered when we got there. I hadn’t brought anything to read from so I hastily arranged with a friend back home to go to our apartment, get this story, and fax it to me at the hotel so that I was able to do the reading in the little ballroom they had set up for unknowns such as myself. The story was pretty well-received (I remember a lot of knowing chuckles when the twist was revealed) and actually led to my getting acquainted with the publisher for the original version of A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder, as their editor was also there doing a reading. Of course, that publisher also folded not long after they published my book. Story of my life lol

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            1. That is a pretty funny story. I have to admit that if I come across “author readings” as an author at a convention I am pretty sure I would think that would be me reading but somehow you got that backwards. However, I am glad it all worked out quite well. I am glad you had a friend who could get the story from your apartment. It reminds me of the time I flew from Chicago to Sweden with an expired passport. I had a new passport but I grabbed the old one. The Swedish immigration let me in but I would not have been able to get back in the US without a valid passport (I was not a US citizen at the time). However, my manager who was traveling to Sweden one week after me was able to retrieve my new passport from my apartment.

              But it is too bad about the publishers folding.

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