Finding Billy Battles: An Account of Peril, Transgression and Redemption - Hardcover

The Finding Billy Battles trilogy tells the amazing story ofa man who is born in 1860 and who dies in 1960. In between Billy lives animprobable and staggering life of adventure, peril, transgression, andredemption. Then Billy mysteriously disappears. For several decades his familyhas no idea where he is or what he is doing.
 
Finally, with his life coming to an end, Billy resurfaces inan old soldiers' home in Leavenworth, Kansas. It is there when he is 98 that hemeets his 12-year-old great-grandson and bequeaths his journals and his otherproperty to him -- though he is not to receive them until he is much older.
 
Years later, thegreat-grandson finally reads the journals and fashions a three volume trilogythat tells of his great-grandfather's audacious life in the old west. But itdoesn't stop there. The trilogy follows Billy on his improbable journeys to theFar East of the 1890s, including French Indochina and The Philippines. Finally,in the 20th century, we learn of Billy's travels to Europe, Mexico and LatinAmerica where his adventures and predicaments continue. One thing readers canbe sure of, wherever Billy Battles goes trouble is not far behind

WilliamBattles is a haunted and hunted man. That certainly wasn't the way he envisionedhis life evolving. But to paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli: "while circumstanceswere beyond his control, his conduct was within his own power."
Born in 1860on a remote West Kansas homestead, Billy Battles' mundane existence takes a bizarreand perilous turn when he is only 19. That is when, while defending himself andsome companions, he accidentally shoots and kills the malevolent matriarch of aclan of Kansas cutthroats and thieves. That fateful encounter sets Battles on aprecarious and sometimes violent course that eventually takes him far from hisKansas roots to the Far East, Central and South America, and the capitals of Europe.
Battles is welleducated at a time when that is rare. His initial occupation is that of newspaperreporter, but circumstances often require him to abandon the journalist's roleof dispassionate observer and become an active participant in the harsh and intenseevents he witnesses. 
During theone hundred year span of his gripping life, Battles faithfully records hisexperiences in several secret journals. Those journals meticulously describe theindividuals he impacts and who impact him; his tragic personal life; and hisinvolvement in such cataclysmic events as the Spanish-American War, uprisingsin French Indochina, the Mexican Revolution and other historic incidents. 
A fewdecades after Battles' death in 1960 his great-grandson (coincidentally also ajournalist) discovers the richly detailed journals and organizes them into atrilogy. This is the first book of that trilogy.