American West Trilogy Books in Order

The American West Trilogy is a historical prequel to the Kevin Kerney novels, tracing the Kerney family’s rise and survival as ranchers in New Mexico. Instead of contemporary crime, these books offer a sweeping family saga built around land, loyalty, and change.

In Hard Country, the story begins in the 1870s with John Kerney, a young rancher whose life is shattered when his wife dies in childbirth and his brother is murdered on the Texas plains. Forced to give up his ranch and leave his infant son behind, he joins a cattle drive into the New Mexico Territory, searching for both revenge and a chance to start again. The novel follows his struggle to carve out a foothold in a harsh frontier world of outlaws, Apache raids, and shifting borders.

Backlands shifts the focus to John’s son, Matt, growing up on the Kerney ranch in the early twentieth century. Matt comes of age during drought, the Great Depression, and family upheaval, carrying grief for a dead brother and frustration with a distant father. As economic shocks and dust storms hammer the Tularosa Basin, he is forced to shoulder adult responsibilities far too soon, fighting to hold the ranch together even as hidden crimes and old betrayals surface.

By The Last Ranch, Matt is a World War II veteran returning to the family land in the San Andres Mountains with a serious combat injury and a fierce determination to keep the place alive. He faces pressure from the U.S. Army, which wants to absorb the ranch into an expanding weapons‑testing range, as well as conflicts with an ex‑convict out for payback, an aging father who can no longer do the work, and a fragile relationship with the woman he loves. Layered on top of all this is a punishing drought that threatens everything the family has built.

Across the trilogy, McGarrity shows how national events—range wars, economic crashes, world wars, and the Cold War—play out on a single stretch of New Mexico ground. The books dwell on the daily realities of ranch life: breaking horses, moving cattle, digging wells, watching the sky for rain, and navigating the slow arrival of roads, electricity, and government oversight.

For readers of the Kevin Kerney mysteries, these novels fill in the backstory of the family and landscape that sit quietly behind the contemporary crimes. They can be read as stand‑alone historical epics or as a long prologue that explains why the Kerneys are so tied to the land and why New Mexico’s hard country matters so much to their descendants.