Stolen Horses by Dan O'Brien.

I was made aware of this straight to trade paper novel, published by The University of Nebraska Press, by my daily email from Shelf Awaerness.

Opening lines of a book we want to read:

Since Erwin Benson was a young man he has been an early riser. Belief that the darkness would cease and that the sun was on its way made him hopeful and was as close to religion as he ever managed. From time to time he wished he could believe in more. He always knew that such a leap would have made life easier, but he could never take that leap and had to settle for the predawn. His early morning ritual has served him well enough. He was eighty-five years old and still working. Already this morning he made his way in the dark from his house on Calvert Street to his office in the Lakota County courthouse. He moved through the inky air like a blind man in his own home. Navigated by the scent of waning lilac and columbine. By feel he found the office key on a ring of many. Without switching on the light, he puttered with the coffeepot and wandered the three rooms of the county prosecutor's office waiting for it to perk. He glanced out the window and was pleased to find the darkness still exhilarating. There was still the sense of risk. There was a chance that today was the day the sun would not rise. Rising early was an act of faith.--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

This novel reveals the lives in the small western Nebraska town as they navigate the rocky transition from rustic old ways to new money opportunities and opportunists. As the two Thurston brothers. Bob and Steve stand by helplessly while their father sells the family ranch to wealthy lawyer John Tully, Steve's single-mother girlfriend, a local newspaper reporter, catches wind of a scandal at the local medical clinic. Meanwhile, the Thurston brothers' cousin, Carl Lindquist, a retired literature professor, returns to town after 30 years' absence to settle down and the derelict family homestead, and Erwin Benson, the oldest serving district attorney in the state of Nebraska, is facing a possible re-election campaign against slick newcomer Tully. In gradual increments, O'Brien teases out the entanglements in these relationships; once the narrative pieces click into place, the story takes on a stoic urgency as it digs into the raw divide between the old guard and the new.

I love books about the West, either Old West, or New West.  This book fits the bill.  It's marvelously written and full of intrigue.  I even laughed out loud a couple of times.