Hank Blankenship and the Longest Fall

Hank Blankenship jumped out of a plane in 2024. He landed in 1870.Henry 'Hank' Blankenship is seventeen years old, a Wyoming cowboy at heart, and the proudest member of the Buffalo Sky Devils - six teenagers who jump out of a rented Cessna on weekends because the sky is the only place where Hank feels like he was born in the right century.His friends say he should have been born a hundred years earlier. On a Saturday morning in May, he finds out exactly how right they are.The freefall is normal. The opening is normal. The landing is not. Hank touches down alone in a meadow along Clear Creek - the same valley, the same Wyoming - 154 years before he was born. No town of Buffalo. No roads. No fences. Just open range and the saddest little cabin he has ever seen, with smoke rising from a tin chimney and a sixty-four-year-old retired ranch hand named Joshua Bettington living inside it.Joshua takes him in without too many questions. Hank takes a job with Herman Thamon, the biggest rancher in the valley. He makes a best friend in Jim Cotton, a young cowboy with bigger dreams than the territory can hold. He makes an enemy in Claven Clower, a bitter ranch hand whose jealousy turns dangerous when cattle start disappearing from the range.And he builds a life he never planned, in a world he never chose.A year passes. Hank loads muskets and stands watch and rides out at first light. He buys a cabin for Joshua so the old man doesn’t die alone. He learns that the real Old West is heavier than the movies - the guns weigh more, the winters kill more, and the cost of violence is a weight that never lifts.He also learns that the movies got one thing right. Loyalty, hard work, and the bonds between people who choose each other can build something that lasts.Even across 154 years.Hank Blankenship and the Longest Fall is a young adult historical adventure about a boy who fell out of his own century and had to grow up in a harder one - and about the old man, the best friend, and the family of strangers who taught him what home was actually made of.For readers of Gary Paulsen, Will Hobbs, and Louis L’Amour. Perfect for middle school and high school readers, and anyone who has ever wished the Old West were real.