The Greatest Western Writer Of The 21st Century For the first time, an epic account of a boy born into a struggle for survival on the harsh and unforgiving American frontier, the story behind the legend of Smoke Jensen. . . On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861, shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war...