The Far Empty – trydersmith.org

Reviews

“Part crime story and part contemporary Western, THE FAR EMPTY blows the West Texas dust off a town’s skeletons (literally), causing a deputy sheriff to take on the powers that be. The confident style, masterful descriptions, and sturdy plot structure resonate as the work of a seasoned author, which is why it’s hard to believe that this is J. Todd Scott’s debut novel. It’s also hard to believe that narrator T. Ryder Smith is a New York native. His natural-sounding West Texas voicings include the border-town accent of the cruel sheriff and the calm, strong-willed tones of a Mexican high school student. Let’s hope the team of Scott and Ryder stays in the saddle for future audiobooks. Like cornbread and molasses–they’re meant to be together.”
– R.W.S., Audiofile magazine

Winner Audiofile award Excellence in Narration

Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross is adrift in the wake of the sudden disappearance of his mother more than a year ago, and is struggling to find his way out of the small Texas border town of Murfee. Chris Cherry is a newly minted sheriff’s deputy, a high school football hero who has reluctantly returned to his hometown. When skeletal remains are discovered in the surrounding badlands, the two are inexorably drawn together as their efforts to uncover Murfee’s darkest secrets lead them to the same terrifying suspect: Caleb’s father and Chris’s boss, the charismatic and feared Sheriff Standford “Judge” Ross. Dark, elegiac, and violent, The Far Empty is a modern Western, a story of loss and escape set along the sharp edge of the Texas border.
– Publisher’s summary