MOST DANGEROUS STREET IN AMERICA by Marisa Masterson

 Chicago? New York? San Francisco? No, in 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes declared a small, single street in a New Mexico town to be the most dangerous street in America.

How could a short length of road down the middle of a New Mexico town be considered so dangerous? Greed and prejudice created the danger in Lincoln County, New Mexico, the name of that town.

Anyone who looks up the Lincoln County War on the Internet can discover the basic facts. Billy the Kid and the Regulators, even John Tunstall, are familiar names to many people. What is less known, I believe, is the prejudice that fueled the bloody years in the small town.

In the British Isles, Irish and English had a centuries old feud. This Old War conflict reignited in the new world that the West represented to Americans and immigrants alike. A man named Murphy ran a store and a rancher named Tunstall started another one in direct competition to the Irish US army veteran's business. Tunstall had immigrated from England. His accent alone would have been enough probably to set off Murphy who hated the English.

The prejudice involved more than Irish versus English. The hatred was rooted in religion. This was a conflict between Catholics and Protestants. That conflict also raged in Europe and raised its ugly head in New Mexico. 

Murphy's store became the site of the Lincoln Co. jail.
I include this 
store in my own novel.

After I researched the events surrounding those bloody years in New Mexico, I realized the importance of religion and ethnicity as causes. This inspired me to create my own small New Mexican town set in 1881. I named my mythical town Harmony since it lacked that and desperately needed it. This town is also separated by racial and religious tensions, the same ones that caused murder and revenge in Lincoln County.

Renie Hunter gladly accepts Harland McGregor's proposal before he leaves to join the Army of the West. Two years pass before he finally sends for her. Her uncle, the man who raised her, insists the young couple marry by proxy before she leaves. He argues New Mexico is far from the world they know.

The proxy marriage might prove to be a bad idea after all. When Renie arrives in the small western town of Harmony, the husband who meets her train seems different from the sweetheart who slipped the small ring on her finger years earlier. Will she still be able to reach the tenderness buried deep inside Harland?

The novel is loosely based on the Lincoln County War.