LIFE, NOT DEATH, DROVE JUBAL YOUNG . . . but memories of his ma and pa, and his beautiful, bright sister are all he has left. Memories of the peaceful days before Jubal stumbled home with his .22, his blood running cold with fear, terror, and anger. When it was over, the homestead was half burned to the ground. Someone had to bury the bodies. Someone had to set things right. Now, as Jubal rides west into New Mexico, he remembers his familys laughter and love, his pas wisdom, mas thick books, and everything that was defiled by a band of drunken renegades towed along by one mans murderous grudge. A reprobate lawman wont believe his story. A soft-hearted mountain man wont survive Jubals one-man war. And a judge and his beautiful daughter cannot stop Jubal from climbing a peak of blood and madness: for justice, or payback, or something he can live foror die forredeeming. An American film icon delivers a great American novel with Payback at Morning Peak. Gene Hackman, whose fiction is rousing (Publishers Weekly) and robust (Winston-Salem Journal), takes readers on a powerful and historically dead-on western odyssey in the tradition of Louis LAmour.