The Last Battle of the Civil War, April 1867 opens The John Gunn Chronicles, a frontier saga rooted in the author’s lifelong study of the American West.
Florida, 4/10/2026— Parker Publishers has released The Last Battle of the Civil War, April 1867, the first installment in The John Gunn Chronicles, a new Western series by author Ronnie Carter.
The novel is set in central Missouri in April 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War, at a time when federal authority across the border states remained uncertain and frontier justice often rested in the hands of local sheriffs and independent bounty hunters. The story follows John David Gunn, a twenty-year-old tracker who sets out to find an escaped killer after a botched hanging in a small farming town. Gunn’s pursuit takes him through the hamlets and muddy backroads of central Missouri, along the corridor that once fed travelers onto the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon trails.
The book runs 24 chapters and an epilogue, and is the first of several planned volumes in the series. Parker Publishers has confirmed that additional entries are in development.
Carter’s connection to the material is a long one. He grew up in southern Idaho, in country where the Oregon Trail ran between his childhood home and the Snake River gorge. He began reading Western fiction as a boy, starting with Zane Grey and Luke Short, and later worked on cattle ranches in eastern Washington and southern Montana, including a summer in 1955 spent on the original Will James ranch south of Billings. Over the course of his life, Carter has read close to eight hundred Western novels by more than eighty authors, a reading list that shaped the voice and pacing of the new series. The dedication page of the book names many of those writers, among them Willa Cather, A.B. Guthrie, Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, Tony Hillerman, John Steinbeck, and Mark Twain.
In the opening chapters, Carter establishes the geography and mood that will carry through the series. Gunn travels with a tall bay gelding, a pale horse he sometimes disguises with boot dye, and a large yellow dog that rides atop his packs. The first book builds toward a confrontation with Paul Stills, a man convicted of killing his own family and sprung from jail the night before his execution. The novel leans on period detail, from the Spencer .52-90 carbine Gunn carries to the cross draw holsters and English bowler hats he uses to change identities between towns.
The John Gunn Chronicles #1: The Last Battle of the Civil War, April 1867 is available worldwide.
About the Author Ronnie Carter is a lifelong student of Western fiction and frontier history. Raised in southern Idaho along the route of the Oregon Trail, he spent his early years reading the genre’s foundational authors and his working years on cattle ranches in eastern Washington and southern Montana. The John Gunn Chronicles is his debut series with Parker Publishers.
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