TOM SHARP: The Man and the Legend (A Novel) is a fast-paced, hard-hitting, and carefully-woven mixture of fact and fiction about a young wounded Confederate soldier from Marion County, Missouri, who became a famous and respected Westerner. Discharged from his enlistment, Tom Sharp joined a wagon train and traveled west. He aimed to earn his fortune, homestead a ranch, marry Katherine Durrett, the lovely young lady he was betrothed to, and start a family. On his dangerous and exciting quest, Sharp encountered renegades, Indians, and slavers--as well as frontiersmen who taught him how to survive in the mountains and on the plains. Although many of the tales are based on actual events and adventures that Tom Sharp experienced, author Charlie Steel engages his craft as a master storyteller and embellishes and adds situations to honor the accomplishments and integrity of this great man from Colorado. Tom Sharp's life, embellished or not, is a story that needs to be told. He was a soldier, buffalo hunter, meat provider for the California and Oregon gold miners, meat provider for the Union Pacific Railroad workers, multiline telegraph pole cutter for the railroad, deputy sheriff, rancher, established and ran a copper stamping mill, built and operated Buzzard Roost Trading Post, bred thoroughbred horses, raised cattle, and was an advocate for Indians, especially Chief Ouray and his band of Utes. Steel writes a story that rivets the reader creating well-rounded characters that provide a unique and more realistic perspective of the WEST.