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Austin writer Elizabeth Crook’s new western, The Madstone (Little, Brown), takes place in 1868, five years after the events of her much-loved previous novel, The Which Way Tree. Benjamin Shreve, the orphaned protagonist of the earlier book, is now nineteen years old and working as a carpenter. By various machinations he finds himself, at first grudgingly, pulled into a domestic drama that carries him from the Hill Country to the Gulf Coast, with no shortage of violence along the way.Although The Madstone is as thrilling as its predecessor, the Benjamin we meet here is no longer a callow, somewhat unformed teenager. Shaped by the events of The Which Way Tree, he assumes the sort of obligation to others that his allies Preacher Dob and Mr.…

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