Stars and Six-Shooters

Theodore "Teddy" Pembroke, Yale astronomer class of '74, arrives in Moon Creek, Wyoming Territory, expecting clear skies and celestial discoveries. Instead, thanks to a bureaucratic blunder of cosmic proportions, he finds himself appointed Federal Marshal—armed with theoretical knowledge of ballistics but zero practical experience beyond misidentifying livestock and repeatedly breaking his spectacles.

Moon Creek is no place for an academic. It's a powder keg of feuding miners and cattlemen, ruled by the iron fist (and elaborate mustache) of Mayor Buford, and haunted by the ghosts of previous marshals who met grisly ends. Teddy's only hope lies in applying the scientific method to frontier justice, devising elaborate traps based on physics, analyzing crime scenes with astronomical precision, and somehow baffling outlaws with lectures on the Coriolis effect.

But as Teddy tracks suspicious riders, uncovers conspiracies involving railroad land grabs and Chicago gambling interests, and faces off against confidence men like Professor Crane, he'll need more than equations. He'll need the help of unlikely allies: the quietly capable Chess Freeman, the pragmatic and sharp-tongued Dr. "Bill" Sutter, and the observant Mei-Lin Chen.

Can an astronomer possibly survive, let alone succeed, as marshal when the only laws that seem to apply are Murphy's and the law of the gun? Can scientific principles actually bring order to the chaos of the West, or will Teddy end up as just another unfortunate variable in Moon Creek's violent equation?