Blood vendettas are messy as hell... In the winter of 1889, after years of incarceration, the tormented son of a Union organizer returns home to the Pennsylvania coal town where his father was murdered. Nineteen-years-old and looking for work as a blacksmith, Daniel Byrnes is soon employed by Jack Carver, his father's killer. Aside from owning the Elsinore Coal Company, Carver is a ruthless lawman. Notorious and widely feared, most people know him simply as 'the sheriff.' Corruption thrives in his cold Appalachian hills, where the only law is the law of the company.Despite being greatly outmatched, Daniel remains hell-bent on revenge. He enlists the help of Butch Blizzard, a one-eyed miner who worked with his father, and Michael McKeeta, a charismatic bachelor with a weakness for women of ill repute. The two of them help Daniel infiltrate Carver's seedy underworld of gambling and prostitution, and together they plan to end the sheriff's reign of terror. But this is easier said than done, especially since Daniel can't seem to stay sober for more than a few hours at a time. It gets worse when Carver offers him a lucrative position: he wants to hire Daniel to kill Union miners. When Daniel refuses, Carver makes it clear that this isn't an option, it's an edict. Growing increasingly unstable, Daniel turns to the bottle for solace. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, obsessed with revenge, he spirals through rage, paranoia, mania, and hopelessness. He can't help but worry that he has more enemies than friends, suspecting that someone close to him is working as a labor spy for the company. But when Union miners start turning up dead, rumors circulate, and some of them even begin to wonder if it's Daniel who's to blame. By the time a violent coal strike sweeps through the Monongahela Valley, bringing with it an army of Baldwin-Felts detective agents, Elsinore mine is like a powder keg ready to blow. Daniel's personal vendetta adds fuel to the fire that erupts in a deadly battle between the Union miners and the company gun thugs. It all comes down to a simple choice: Daniel must decide how far he's willing to go to avenge his father's blood. Is he ready to die for revenge?
About the Author: Robert Lee Bailey grew up in a small coal town south of Pittsburgh. As a part of his extensive research for Monongahela Blood, his first novel, he bought a forge and anvil from an old farmer and, with a little guidance here and there, taught himself the art of blacksmithing. Other hobbies he picked up along the way include horseback riding and backcountry camping. His writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and online magazines, and he received his MFA at Carlow University. He provides updates about his recently published work at his website: www.anatomyoftheartist.com.