Strong from the Heart
(Caitlin Strong #11)
Caitlin Strong wages her own personal war on drugs against the true power behind the illicit opioid trade in Strong from the Heart, the blistering and relentless 11th installment in Jon Land’s award-winning series.
The drug crisis hits home for fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong when the son of her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters nearly dies from an opioid overdose. On top of that, she’s dealing with the inexplicable tragedy of a small Texas town where all the residents died in a single night.
When Caitlin realizes that these two pursuits are intrinsically connected, she finds herself following a trail that will take her to the truth behind the crisis that claimed 75,000 lives last year. Just in time, since the same force that has taken over the opiate trade has even more deadly intentions in mind, specifically the murder of tens of millions in pursuit of their even more nefarious goals.
The power base she’s up against―comprised of politicians and Big Pharma, along with corrupt doctors and drug distributors―has successfully beaten back all threats in the past. But they’ve never had to deal with the likes of Caitlin Strong before and have no idea what’s in store when the guns of Texas come calling.
At the root of the conspiracy lies a cabal nestled within the highest corridors of power that’s determined to destroy all threats posed to them. Caitlin and Cort Wesley may have finally met their match, finding themselves isolated and ostracized with nowhere to turn, even as they strive to remain strong from the heart.
PRAISE FOR STRONG FROM THE HEART:
“A time-jumping, savory Tex-Mex tale, seasoned with all the ingredients of a great thriller.”―Brad Meltzer, New York Times bestselling author
“A mind-blowing tale that takes a flamethrower to our psyches to warm the chill it leaves up our spines. Seething with energy and replete with wondrously staged set pieces, this is thriller writing that defies genre even as it reminds us why we love to read.”―NYK Daily
“Exceptional…. Snappy one-liners, plausible dialogue, and lots of nonstop action, Land delivers another riveting, believable thriller.”―Press-Republican
“Caitlin Strong is one of the strongest female characters ever to hit the page, and Jon Land is the king of the intelligent thriller, continually pushing his own writing to new levels.”―New York Journal of Books
12 THINGS THE READER DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT CAITLIN
- She was inspired to follow the Strong family tradition by becoming a Texas Ranger, only after she was sexually assaulted as a college student and the man who did it was never caught.
- Her legendary father and grandfather, Jim and Earl Strong, worked on only a single case together as Texas Rangers, tracking killers who were after the legendary lost treasure of the pirate Jean Lafitte who really did base his operations off Texas’ Galveston Island, as told in STRONG VENGEANCE.
- In the latest book in the series and 11th overall, STRONG FROM THE HEART, she develops an addiction to the opioids she’s being treated with for something that happens at the end of STRONG AS STEEL, the previous book in the series.
- She actually left the Rangers for a time after tracking down and executing the cartel soldiers who killed her Texas Ranger partner Charlie Banks.
- She was married for a brief stretch and her husband was thought to have died while serving as a contractor in Iraq. But the first book in the series, STRONG ENOUGH TO DIE, brings him back into her life as an amnesiac with no memory of her or what happened to him. This proved to be the impetus for her return to the Rangers.
- Her grandfather taught her how to shoot at the age of six or seven and she could handle the likes of a 1911 Springfield model .45 by the time she was nine when she won her first shooting competition.
- At the age of four, she witnessed the murder of her mother by drug mules but has no memory of that to this day, though she believes a lot of her more violent tendencies, and gunfighter mentality, stem from that day.
- Caitlin also believes that incident is to blame for the fact that she never married or had children of her own. But it also explains her attachment to the sons of her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters for whom she becomes a surrogate mother.
- When she was thirteen, she witnessed her father gunning down a villain who’d escaped the law. Years later, as told in STRONG AT THE BREAK, she comes up against the man’s son, who also bore witness to Caitlin’s father Jim Strong killing his father.
- Caitlin’s giant, deadly protector and guardian angel Guillermo Paz, the former head of the Venezuelan Secret Police, was actually hired to kill her in STRONG ENOUGH TO DIE. But she turned the tables in classic Caitlin form.
- Caitlin is a quarter Mexican, thanks to an affair her grandfather, and fellow Texas Ranger, Earl Strong had with a woman he rescued from an early form of human trafficking in 1934 Texas.
- Staying on the family theme, Caitlin also has a half-sister thanks to an affair her father Jim Strong had with a Mexican crime boss whose life he saved in STRONG AS STEEL, the most recent, and just released, book in the series.
Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty books, eleven of which feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. The critically acclaimed series has won more than a dozen awards, including the 2019 International Book Award for Best Thriller for Strong as Steel and the 2020 American Fiction Award for Best Thriller. He has also authored six books in the MURDER, SHE WROTE series and has recently taken over writing Margaret Truman’s CAPITAL CRIMES series. A 1979 graduate of Brown University, Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island and received the 2019 Rhode Island Authors Legacy Award for his lifetime of literary achievements.
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