Huge Announcement: Jawbone Holler Is Now on Audible!

There are projects you plan. And there are projects you intend to get to “someday.”

For me, turning Jawbone Holler into an audiobook lived in that second category.

From the moment the novel launched, readers told me they wanted to hear it. They wanted the cadence. They wanted to hear the characters speak. They wanted Perry Adams’ journey to Kansas Territory told the way it might have been shared around a potbelly stove or across a rough-hewn bar.

I agreed. I just never carved out the time to make it happen. Producing an audiobook is no small lift. Recording time. Editing. Distribution. It demands focus, coordination, and patience. Between client work, writing, and life, it kept sliding down the list.

Then I thought of someone who would be a worthy voice. That is my old friend Tom Steever. The seed was kind of planted by Tom some months ago, when he informed me would like permission to record the book for the visually impaired through his local library. He had time and interest, so I asked, why not just take the next step and do it for Audible?

As it turned out, Tom was the perfect voice for my cast of Jawbone Holler characters. Some might have been a bit more challenging, like the women of Jawbone Holler, he nailed it with impeccable production.

Tom is a Hall of Fame Farm Broadcaster and a golden-throated orator with a voice built for storytelling. We’ve been friends a long time, but we were also colleagues at the American Farm Bureau Federation years ago. When our office relocated from the Chicago area to Washington, D.C., I made the move. Tom charted a different course and embarked on a powerhouse broadcasting career at The Brownfield Network, becoming one of agriculture’s most trusted voices.

When it came time to get Jawbone Holler across the finish line in audio form, Tom was near the top of my list. And now, Jawbone Holler is available as an unabridged Audible audiobook.

The story follows Perry Adams, a young man who hits rock bottom in Indiana, driven by too much alcohol, a volatile father, and not enough patience. Perry steals his father’s mule and heads west toward Kansas Territory in search of freedom and redemption. He finds neither easily.

Arriving as an unprepared squatter during a brutal winter in a land that would be known as Bleeding Kansas, Perry steps into a land where beatings, lynchings, pillage, and murder were already common currency. His dream of building a farm, finding love, and starting a family collides with the violent fault lines of a nation splitting apart over slavery.

Along the way, he forms unlikely bonds — a local constable, freed slaves carving their own futures, a bartending couple, a shopkeeper, even a mysterious “genie.” He falls for an angelic schoolteacher who plays piano at the bar. Surviving the war — and winning her heart — become his twin obsessions.

Tom’s narration brings weight to Perry’s struggles and strength to his redemption. The rough edges. The quiet resolve. The heartbreak. The hope. This audiobook exists because a friend stepped in where I hadn’t. And I’m grateful he did. In fact, Tom is already working on The Ghosts of Gumbo Flats.

So, if you prefer your stories on the road, in the tractor cab, during a workout, or late at night with the lights off — Jawbone Holler now rides with you. You can find the unabridged audiobook on Audible. Perry is ready to ride along and his saddlebag is packed. It’s time to skedaddle.