Hank Blankenship and the Longest Fall: 154 Years from Home, (Paperback)

<p><strong>Hank Blankenship jumped out of a plane in 2024. He landed in 1870.</strong></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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 <strong>Joshua Bettington</strong> living inside it.</p><p>Joshua takes him in without too many questions. Hank takes a job with <strong>Herman Thamon</strong>, the biggest rancher in the valley. He makes a best friend in <strong>Jim Cotton</strong>, a young cowboy with bigger dreams than the territory can hold. He makes an enemy in <strong>Claven Clower</strong>, a bitter ranch hand whose jealousy turns dangerous when cattle start disappearing from the range.</p><p>And he builds a life he never planned, in a world he never chose.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Even across 154 years.</p><p><strong><em>Hank Blankenship and the Longest Fall</em> 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.</strong></p><p><strong>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.</strong></p>

• Hank Blankenship and the Longest Fall: 154 Years from Home, (Paperback)
• Author: Jackie L Smith
• ISBN: 9798995928065
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2026-05-12
• Page Count: 266