Stephen G. Michaud
Maryland (formerly Texas)
Award-Winning Investigative Journalist and Bestselling Author of Robert’s Story: A Texas Cowboy’s Troubled Life and Horrifying Death
BOOK COVER
BOOK DETAILS
Pub Date: September 2022
Genre: Biography/Elder Abuse/Texas Ranching
Publisher: Coyote Publishing LLC
Page Count: 384
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 979-8985265002
Price: $29.95
ABOUT THE BOOK
An astonishing Texas tale that’s stranger than fiction and primed for a docuseries or reality TV.
Tired, disoriented, and confused, Robert East was no match for the “wolves” when they arrived.
Robert East loved his older brother Tom but always resented his favored role in the family cattle business based at their San Antonio Viejo ranch near Hebbronville, Texas, just north of the Rio Grande.
Tom was a figure to be reckoned with, a cattleman with ambitions to supplant their uncle Bob Kleberg, head of the enormous King Ranch, as the leading cattle raiser in Texas. Robert, by contrast, was a cowboy who cared little for what occurred beyond the San Antonio Viejo’s main gate. Handsome and ornery, with no head for business, he nevertheless chafed in his brother’s shadow until 1984, when Tom died young of a heart attack.
Suddenly, Robert was the new and untested patron of 250,000 acres of East Family ranchland―and the majority owner of the ocean of natural gas pooled beneath East rangeland.
Robert’s contentious nature drove the Easts into bitter intra-family legal warfare that persisted for a decade. He lost his beloved sister, Lica, to cancer, and as old age advanced, he found himself alone and isolated on a remote ranch with only an unreliable foreman and a scattering of vaqueros and other workers for company.
The physical wear and tear from decades of working cattle on horseback began to show. Robert’s knees gave out, and he developed serious cardiovascular problems. His doctors prescribed pain pills, sedatives, and medications for his chronic depression. In 2000, drillers hit the most productive gas well in the U.S, if not the world, on East property, making the old man suddenly and spectacularly wealthy beyond his comprehension.
Soon enough the “wolves” began to circle, and Robert’s grotesque final days were at hand.
For more, visit robertstory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen G. Michaud is an internationally recognized author, co-author, investigative reporter, and editor whose decades-long career credits comprise 20 books and multiple contributions to periodicals including Newsweek, Businessweek, The New York Times, Maxim, Reader’s Digest, Salon, Boys’ Life, and Playboy.
Michaud’s published works―in an impressive variety of genres ranging from World War II, the Cuban revolution, true crime, and mountain-climbing to Texas history and serial murder―have sold over 2 million copies and have been translated into 15 languages.
The New York Daily News named The Only Living Witness (a biography of serial killer Ted Bundy co-authored with Hugh Aynesworth) one of the 10 best true-crime books ever written. Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer, a compilation of Michaud and Aynesworth’s death-row interviews with Bundy, was a New York Times bestseller, and a Netflix four-part series.
His titles also include If You Love Me, You Will Do My Will, the story of Texas heiress Sarita Kenedy East, written with Hugh Aynesworth, and two volumes on aberrant criminal behavior written with Robert Hazelwood, the celebrated FBI profiler who helped found the Bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit.
He lives in Maryland and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.
TALKING POINTS
- You’ve written about outlaws and criminals from Ted Bundy to a rogue Trappist monk named Brother Leo. How does Robert’s Story fit into your true crime book shelf?
- What attracted you to the story?
- What’s the major challenge in writing such a complex family saga?
PRAISE
“Michaud has written a work immense in research and interview disclosure. The interspersed short side tales of sadness, humor and insight into the East family psyche make them all the more accessible and human. Despite the inherent quirks, peccadillos, cussedness, and flat-out ego – this is ultimately the story of family. Because of the unimaginable amounts of land and money at stake and because one man, Robert East, became potentate of a post he little grasped and ultimately blundered, Michaud has unveiled an epic story of worlds colliding under the illuminating magnifying glass of yet another larger-than-life Texas saga.”
—SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
“Robert’s Story: A Texas Cowboy’s Troubled Life and Horrifying Death proves once again that when it comes to crafting gripping, real-life tales of dark, inhuman schemes, nobody does it better than Stephen G. Michaud. After reading about the abominations inflicted on dying Texas rancher Robert East, you may have trouble trusting anyone again. It’s typically great storytelling by a master writer.”
—JEFF GUINN, author of The New York Times best seller, Manson
“Robert’s Story tells the tale of a Texas rancher who never aspired to be anything other than a real, true-to-life cowboy. Nearing the end of the trail, he finds himself awash in a sea of serious oil money and literally doesn’t know what to do with it. He learns too late that his medical and legal consultants, estate planners—even his foreman—snarling wolves and circling vultures cloaked in benign business suits and Stetsons—have plans of their own. Stephen G. Michaud has once again displayed his signature ability to join engaging prose and sense of story with meticulous research into a read meant for lovers of Western lore.”
—CALEB COKER, author of The News from Brownsville
“Robert’s Story is a timeless tale of folly, duplicity, and greed. A descendant of the cattle baron Richard King, Robert East was an extraordinarily wealthy, but mercurial South Texas cattleman. This page-turning account describes how human coyotes betrayed Robert’s trust, destroyed his health, and conspired to steal his fortune.”
—WALTER E. WILSON, Captain, USN (ret.), author of Civil War Scoundrels and the Texas Cotton Trade, The Bulloch Belles, and co-author of James D. Bulloch: Secret Agent and Mastermind of the Confederate Navy
“Get ready for a Texas family saga set on a stage of millions of dollars’ worth of livestock grazing on sprawling ranchlands the size of some small countries. Toss in diabolical forces plotting to rob a dying man of his fortune and proud legacy, and you’ve got Giant on steroids. Author Stephen G. Michaud has crafted a well researched and finely written tragedy the Greeks would most certainly envy.”
—CARLTON STOWERS, two-time Edgar winner and inductee into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame
“Stephen G. Michaud tells the story of Robert East, his family, and their ranches in compelling detail. Overcoming the reluctance of the region’s seigneurial families to disclose their internal differences, Michaud recounts the remote landscapes, plain manners, dynastic families, and rigorous work ethic that characterize the borderlands of deep South Texas. He shows how wealth, rather than rewarding lifetimes of hard labor, contaminates and corrupts relationships of loyalty and trust. This is a powerful book, made more so by the economy and incisiveness of Michaud’s writing.”
—STEPHEN FOX, Fellow, Anchorage Foundation of Texas
“The emotional, psychological, and legal manipulation Robert endured, and which the East family suffered, is a real tragedy.”
—LLOYD J. JASSIN, New York City-based publishing and entertainment law attorney
BOOK DETAILS
Pub Date: May 17, 2022
Genre: Memoir / Christian Inspirational
Publisher: She Writes Press
Page Count: 304
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1647429003
Price: $15.99