Like opioids.
Yup, that was where Strong from the Heart started, with this magical question: What if Caitlin Strong took on the opioid crisis? What if that crisis hit painfully close to home? What if Caitlin herself realized she might have a problem, too?
Then I was off and running. But, as all of you know, that’s never enough for me. So I had this vision of a prologue centering around a small town wiped out in a matter of minutes or even less, a kind of homage to the classic opening of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, something that’s stayed with me since I first saw the film when I was maybe twelve years old. The problem was I had no idea what killed the town of Camino Pass and how it connected to the opioid crisis that would define the book’s central focus.
Now we come to the fortune. Turned out that hydrogen cyanide was the ideal toxin to get the job done. Turned out cyanide was used heavily in the process of extracting gold from ore. Turned out there were gold mines at one time stitched along the border with Texas and Mexico. See what I’m getting at here? Anyway, I had my book.
Next came the historical thread involving Caitlin’s great-grandfather, William Ray Strong, who’d already kept company, in past books, with the likes of Judge Roy Bean. I’d started writing the scene where he rides into Camino Pass, the very same town that gets wiped out in the present, to pick up a prisoner, only to learn that the town’s children have all been kidnapped, before I realized that prisoner was none other than a young Pancho Villa. Somewhat historically accurate as far as Villa’s background was concerned, but mostly I thought it would be a blast to team the two of them together. And the trail they end up following leads straight to another historically accurate fact: that Chinese immigrants to Mexico brought poppy seeds with them, giving birth to the very drug trade roiling the United States today.
How about that?
The thing I enjoy most about writing the Caitlin Strong books is probably the very same thing you enjoy most about reading them: watching the pieces of the story slowly come together. Kind of like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. And if I don’t know how those pieces are going to fit when I start the book, it makes it that much harder for you to figure out the various twists and turns that spring up along the way. Call it the fun of writing spontaneously and not working off an outline. The best stuff I came up with in Strong from the Heart, and all the other books in the series, is the stuff I wasn’t aware of when I first put fingers to keyboard.
That’s what makes the Caitlin Strong books such a blast to write. And the more fun I have writing them, the more fun you’re going to have reading them. So it should come as no surprise that I have no idea what the story I’ll have for you at this time next year is going to be. I just know I’m going to love writing it, which means you’re going to love reading it. That’s a promise.
So be well until next we meet, and feel free to reach out to me at www.jonlandbooks.com. I enjoy nothing more than hearing from my readers—well, except for writing the books in the first place!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but let’s start at the top with CEO Tom Doherty and Forge’s publisher Linda Quinton, dear friends who publish books “the way they should be published,” to quote my late agent, the legendary Toni Mendez. The great Bob Gleason and Natalia Aponte are there for me at every turn. Editing may be a lost art, but not here thanks to both Natalia and Bob, and I think you’ll enjoy all of my books, including this one, much more as a result.
My friend Mike Blakely, a great writer and musician, taught me Texas firsthand and helped me think like a native of that great state. And Larry Thompson, a terrific writer in his own right, has joined the team as well to make sure I do justice to his home state along now with his son-in-law, a Texas Ranger himself. And special acknowledgments to Bill Miller who helped me smooth out the geography of the Lone Star State. Thanks, again also to Terry Ayers for making my scientific jargon sound at least somewhat credible.
A final thanks to Dan Addario, on whom I based the Doyle Lodge character you just met. For more of Dan’s incredible story as a legendary DEA agent who’s been fighting the war on drugs as long as there’s been one, check out the book Chasing the Dragon, which I wrote with him. Like Doyle Lodge, Dan lost his own son to the scourge of opioids. And the fight he continues to wage is aimed at ensuring not another parent need experience such a tragedy.
Check back at www.jonlandbooks.com for updates or to drop me a line, and please follow me on Twitter @jondland. Thanks to all of you who’ve already written, tweeted, or emailed me your thoughts on any or all of the first ten books in the Caitlin Strong series. You are truly the wind beneath this particular author’s wings and I genuinely hope you enjoyed this Caitlin Strong adventure as much as the others.
OTHER BOOKS BY JON LAND
The Alpha Deception
*Betrayal (nonfiction)
*Black Scorpion: The Tyrant Reborn
*Blood Diamonds
*The Blue Widows
The Council of Ten
*Dark Light: Dawn
*Day of the Delphi
*Dead Simple
*Dolphin Key
The Doomsday Spiral
The Eighth Trumpet
*The Fires of Midnight
The Gamma Option
*Hope Mountain
*Keepers of the Gate
*Kingdom of the Seven
Labyrinth
*The Last Prophecy
The Lucifer Directive
The Ninth Dominion
The Omega Command
The Omicron Legion
Pandora’s Temple
*The Pillars of Solomon
The Rising
*The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending
*Strong as Steel
*Strong at the Break
*Strong Cold Dead
*Strong Darkness
*Strong Enough to Die
*Strong Justice
*Strong Light of Day
*Strong Rain Falling
*Strong to the Bone
*Strong Vengeance
*Takedown (nonfiction)
The Tenth Circle
The Valhalla Testament
The Vengeance of the Tau
Vortex
*A Walk in the Darkness
*The Walls of Jericho
*Published by Forge Books
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JON LAND is the USA Today bestselling author of fifty-two books, including eleven featuring Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. The critically acclaimed series has won more than a dozen major book awards, including the 2019 International Book Award for Best Thriller for Strong as Steel. He also received the 2019 Rhode Island Authors Legacy Award for his lifetime of literary achievements. A graduate of Brown University, Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and can be found at jonlandbooks.com or on Twitter as @jondland. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One. John Coffee Hays
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Two. Samuel H. Walker
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Part Three. Ben Mcculloch
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Part Four. William “Bigfoot” Wallace
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Part Five. John B. Armstrong
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Part Six. John B. Jones
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Part Seven. Captain Bill Mcdonald
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Part Eight. Frank Hamer
Chapter 85
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Part Nine. Manuel “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Part Ten. Joaquin Jackson
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Other Books by Jon Land
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
STRONG FROM THE HEART
Copyright © 2020 by Jon Land
All rights reserved.
Cover photographs by Shutterstock.com (background) and Trevillion Images (woman)
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8470-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-8471-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765384713
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First Edition: 2020