About A Rare and Dangerous Beast by Lloyd Mullins
When Anatoly Lukyanov arrives in the U.S. during the California Gold Rush, he is just a wide-eyed, idealistic Russian/Buriat kid, in love with the idea, and ideals, of America. Soon, he finds work he loves as a cowboy, along with a new American name: Nate Luck. Over the next forty years, Nate experiences both the best and the worst that America has to offer – as a cowboy, a soldier, an adopted member of the Nez Perce tribe, a deputy sheriff, and a prisoner awaiting trial for murder. Through it all, he fights for freedom and justice alongside, or against, iconic Westerners like Colonel John Chivington, Captain Silas Soule, Chief Black Kettle, Chief Joseph, Yellow Wolf, General Oliver O. Howard, Nate Champion, Tom Horn, and many others.
Nate’s story is one of love and heartbreak, triumph and tragedy, high adventure and darkest horror, but even when things are darkest, Nate never loses his dedication to the American ideals of freedom, justice, and equality under the law.
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Author Bio:
Lloyd Mullins grew up on an Indiana tree farm, and then spent 20 years serving in the U.S. Air Force. After retiring from the service, he came to the startling realization that he was completely untrained in anything that would enable him to make a living in the civilian world. After a 10-year series of jobs (photographer, skid builder, retail worker, camper delivery, and school bus driver), and a heart attack, he decided to give college a try. To his surprise, he found he loved school so much that he refuses to leave. He currently holds an MFA in Creative Writing – Fiction from Miami University, and works at the Indiana University East Writing Center as a writing consultant. He reads voraciously, and is also a life-long student of American history, particularly the Old West. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in America’s Emerging Literary Fiction Writers: Illinois, Indiana, & Iowa, Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction, Indiana’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Fiction, and Tributaries: The Indiana University East Journal of Fine Arts, and Frontier Tales Magazine. His self-published novel Thumperica: A Novel of the Ghost of America Future was a Semifinalist in the 2018 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Competition, and A Rare and Dangerous Beast was a quarter-finalist in the 2023 Cinematic Book Competition (under the working title To Be Free: The Life and Times of Nate Luck). Chapter Four of A Rare and Dangerous Beast as published in the November 2022 edition of Frontier Tales magazine, under the title: “A Cowhand by Any Other Name”, and voted the reader’s favorite tale for November 2022.
For what it’s worth (He really has no idea), To Be Free has earned 5 stars and the “Highly Recommended” award of excellence from the Historical Fiction Company, 4.8 stars from IndieReader Pro, and compared thematically to No Country For Old Men, True Grit, and Unforgiven in feedback from the 2023 Screencraft Cinematic Book Competition.