The Forsaken and the Dead: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book Three - Paperback

by Sidney Thompson (Author)

Books 1 & 2 of the Bass Reeves Trilogy adapted for the Paramount+ miniseries Lawmen: Bass Reeves

Winner of the 2025 International Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Award
Winner of the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award
Finalist for the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book Award

All heroes have fatal flaws and a moment of defining hubris, but few rise from the ashes to achieve greater heights. In 1884 Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves was arrested for murder and placed among his own prisoners in Hell on the Border, the infamous federal jail in Fort Smith, Arkansas. It was the single greatest setback of his illustrious career, but it wouldn't be his last mistake or trial by fire.

In The Forsaken and the Dead we meet Reeves again. In the 1890s, past his prime, Reeves proceeds through the valleys and shadows of Indian and Oklahoma Territories. Despite his caution and innovations as a lawman and detective, his nation no longer seems a product of his own making--so much like his children and his marriage to Jennie. While a modern world implodes around him and demons from his past continue to haunt his present, he remains resolute in his faith that he can be a steady rider on a pale horse.

Author Biography

Sidney Thompson teaches creative writing and African American literature at Texas Christian University. He is the author of the award-winning Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book One (Bison Books, 2020) and Hell on the Border: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book Two (Bison Books, 2021), adapted for the Paramount+ miniseries Lawmen: Bass Reeves, directed by Taylor Sheridan and starring David Oyelowo.