Gloria M. Freeman, the author of, The Y Track Series, normally pens novels for older teens and adults, but in the spirit of whimsy decided to engage an audience a bit younger at heart. This tongue-in-cheek tale is spun by a fabled tale-teller traveling about the kingdom of Alonzo. The story at the very heart of the matter is told by a manipulative and vindictive elf; of a newly hatched chick who is abandoned soon after hatching in the vast woodlands belonging to King Alonzo. As it struggles to survive, the chick is beseiged by all sorts of dangers and hardships, including a hungry fox, a farmer's boy on the hunt and a maurading raccoon that relishes a meal of young chicken. As the elf, Perzabub, sings: My tale is of danger and a message quite true, and so a few twists and turns ensue; along with some tears and a smile or two.

Born in a hay loft in a local barn in San Diego county, Toby spends his formative years in luxury and comfort, exploring the wooded hills of rural Valley Center, California. Toby grows and thrives under the loving watchful eye of his "woman," her anxious husband and the family's loving German Shepherd. A financial crisis necessitates a move. While his "woman" and man negotiate relocation, Toby is temporarily transitioned to the daughter's home in a busy urban town, where he is more or less rejected and ignored. His dog friend no longer with him, the confused and distressed orange tabby is hauled through the Mojave Desert in August en route to Florida, which almost does him in. In Florida, with his people and dog friend, Toby does his best to adjust to alien territory and eather and relearns new hunting techniques. A subsequent move back to southern Californa is short-lived. Toby and his family relocate to northwestern Iowa. Now totally out of his element and positioned in an air conditioned house among strange folks, a distraught Toby, after continually hassled by the two, resident territorial terriers, flees the scene. Lonely and lost in Iowa farm country, the orange tabby struggles to survive and longs for his own "woman" to come for him. When the fierce cold of Iowa winter sweeps in, Toby has all he can do to hang on.

Book seven, staged in the 1930's, has the part-time special government agent and bounty hunter, Yearless Wohlford, leaving his Florida homestead on the track of a fugitive transvestite. The nostalgic Yearless, ingrained with the old school way of thinking, shuns automobiles to ride horseback cross-country to set up a sting in southern California. En route, he encounters a strong-minded redhead fleeing an abusive husband and offers her an escort to the West Coast. During the early part of the trip, Yearless is set upon by the intrusive and conniving lawbreaker, John Eppert, who continues to plague and hassle him. Eppert's great admiration and respect for the confident and capable Yearless turns to ribald jealousy after he is rejected, and he plots his ultimate revenge. Enter Dan Williams, who as usual turns everything upside down.

Book three in this series finds Bill Bentley riding into Escondido, California. There, he adopts a young sidekick to assist him on his hunt and meets the lovely Johnny Perez during a dinner at the big ranch house. (Adult Fiction)

Robert Sobriette, a "man's man" of the times is disgusted with his job and its traumatic consequences. Trying to break free is virtually impossible however, being that he works for a duty bound, egotistical sycophant that heads the western unit of a 1900 Federal, Special Services force. Captain Maurice Colbert, a company man to the letter, is Sobriette's nemesis. Sadistic and revengeful, Colbert fails to crush Sobriette's independent spirit and initiates troops to track him down and destroy him. Fleeing for his life, Sobriette takes into account an old friend's recommendation and puts himself in the hands of an off-the-wall Prescott attorney. While in town, he spends a passion filled night in the arms of the attorney's pretty secretary. Called into play, Dan Williams makes an abrupt and startling appearance and leads Sobriette along an untimely bizarre path. Whisking him to the top of the distant hills so he can escape Colbert's agents, Dan makes a lame attempt to befriend the stalwart and handsome Sobriette, whose only thought is getting back down the mountain. Fleeing across Arizona with Colbert's men on his tail, Sobriette strives to stay alive and protect the young woman he is falling in love with.

The fifth book in the adventure series has young Dan Williams in trouble due to frustration over Dave Berringer's seeming rejection of him. Dan's revengeful and childish pranks cause much contention and dissention at the Medicine Bow ranch and the ranch owner, Dave Berringer, socially rejects him. Accused of poisoning Berringer, his heretofore hero and mentor, Dan invents a spectacular means to flee the scene. Contriving a meeting with the old-time bounty hunter, Bill Bentley, the two face terrible peril at boulder hill. Bill is greatly puzzled by this strange young man who seems to know far too much, and who arrived out of the blue to fight by his side. Caught in a perilous moral vice in the old Kingman, Arizona hotel, Dan resorts to offering the wounded bounty hunter three critical choices.

Book eleven in The Y Track series . . . the continuing saga of Yearless Wohlford, circa 1936-37 Hired by the Feds to recapture a wanted felon, Yearless tracks his prey through rough southern California backcountry and over mountains, accompanied by a strange traveler eager to befriend him. Torn between his job, an intrusive genius sidekick, a woman who is in love with him and a criminal he is bound to see behind bars, who swears he is innocent, Yearless pushes on through angst and adversity, striving to maintain and exhibit strength of character. What he had thought was solid and true begins to wrench around his mind-set and causes him to question prior beliefs. Striving to capture his man and get his life back on track, a sudden drop-in visit by a traveler from another time and place causes Yearless much aggravation and frustration. Beseiged by the young man, who is insistent on persuading Yearless to help him in a search for a lost wheel, Yearless begins to have second thoughts about his job and the prostitue he lusts after. An entirely different perspective wrenchs around Yearless' decisive action concerning his trek and the man he is chasing down to return to jail.