Product Details:
𖤓 Title: THE ONLY WAY TO CHEAT A HANGMAN
𖤓 Author: Leah Angstman
𖤓 Series: The Westering Duology
𖤓 Series #: Book 1
𖤓 Time Period: Pioneering / Wagon Trains (1840s), California Gold Rush (1850s)
𖤓 Location: Mostly Sacramento Valley, California, USA; also Kansas–Nebraska Territory and Fort Bridger, Wyoming
𖤓 Fiction | Novel | Historical
𖤓 Release Date: Spring 2026
𖤓 Print ISBN: Coming Soon
𖤓 Ebook ISBN: Coming Soon
𖤓 6 x 9 Perfectbound
𖤓 Cream Paper, # Pages
𖤓 Cover Art: Past Imperfect

• 8/2/24: Finalist for Novel in the Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition
• 2/29/24: Finalist for the Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction
• 1/14/24: Semifinalist for the Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction
• 11/16/23: Shortlisted for the Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction
• 10/9/23: Longlisted for the Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction
• 1/5/22: Finalist for the Laramie Book Awards for Pioneer Fiction
• 4/18/22: Semifinalist for the Laramie Book Awards for Pioneer Fiction
• 1/12/22: Shortlisted for the Laramie Book Awards for Pioneer Fiction
• 8/9/21: Longlisted for the Laramie Book Awards for Pioneer Fiction

𖤓 Laramie Book Award for Americana Fiction Finalist

𖤓 Laramie Book Award for Pioneer Fiction Finalist

𖤓 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Finalist for Novel

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Expected Release: Spring 2026

THE ONLY WAY TO CHEAT A HANGMAN intersects two stories, one that takes place in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada at the decline of the Gold Rush, and one that takes place on the first Orphan Trains to the Midwest and West Coast.

Seth Multry, a drunk, gambling frontiersman, loses everything he has, including his two young daughters, to a tragedy beyond imagining. As he grieves, he resettles in a placer mine outside Sacramento, where an adversarial speculator aims to siphon Seth’s claim via illegal hydraulic blast mining on unsteady ground. In an effort to regain his land, Seth finds himself up against railroad tycoons, corrupt bankers, and the neighboring mining settlements that get flooded by the blast mining erosion.

His saving grace comes in the form of Mildred, a child from the Orphan Trains who has escaped her troubled foster home and somehow ended up on his claim. She forces him to feel something again when bounty hunters from her dangerous past pursue her among a milieu of riots, mobs of broke miners, and violent hatred toward Chinese laborers that can only end in bloodshed. Biting language, visceral detail, and brutal inhumanity will plunge readers into Leah Angstman’s dark chasm of greed and manifest destiny.

THE ONLY WAY TO CHEAT A HANGMAN touches on historical issues with which we still struggle as societies and humans today, including land rights, our relationship to and destruction of the earth, and the treatment of minorities and other cultures within a predominantly white area. The novel will appeal to fans of Paulette Jiles, Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, and C. Pam Zhang.

Content Warning: This book contains sexual assault of a minor, graphic depictions of violence and hate crimes, and strong, uncomfortable language.

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Leah Angstman is a transplanted Michigander currently living in Boulder. She is the author of the novel OUT FRONT THE FOLLOWING SEA (Regal House Publishing, 2022), which won 29 awards, including the CIPA Evvy gold for historical fiction, Herb Tabak Choice Award for fiction, and New England Society Book Award for fiction, and was a finalist for numerous awards, including the Reading the West Book Awards for debut and IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards for best new voice in fiction. Her second book, SHOOT THE HORSES FIRST (Kernpunkt Press, 2023), was the Indie Author Project’s Colorado adult fiction winner and IPNE overall Fiction of the Year winner, and has won 23 awards, including the Shorts Award for Americana fiction, Next Generation Indie Book Award gold for short stories, and National Indie Excellence Awards Juror’s Choice and gold for short stories, as well as being named a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Awards for best western short fiction, Reading the West Book Awards for fiction, and Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Leah’s third book, the novel FALCON IN THE DIVE (Regal House Publishing, 2024), was recently honored with 9 awards, including the Next Generation Indie Book Awards gold for second novel and being shortlisted for the Hawthorne Prize and CIPA Evvy for both historical fiction and thrillers/suspense. Leah’s latest novel, THE ONLY WAY TO CHEAT A HANGMAN (Past Imperfect, 2026), was a finalist in the Faulkner–Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for novels, and Laramie Book Awards for Americana and pioneer fiction. Her first poetry collection, REVERSE MIGRATION: NOT COMING HOME (Augustan Age, 2025), was honored with 9 awards, including the Loudoun Library Foundation Poetry Award and being a finalist for the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Richard Snyder Memorial Prize, Able Muse Book Award judged by Charles Martin; and Saluda River Prize for Poetry judged by poet Ray McManus and South Carolina poet laureate Marjory Heath Wentworth. Leah’s second collection of poetry is THE SIGHS OF WOMEN BECOMING (Augustan Age, 2026). She is the founder and executive editor of Boulder-based Alternating Current Press and The Coil online magazine, and she copyedits for Mother Jones. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Nashville Review. You can find her at leahangstman.com and on social media as @leahangstman.

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