Gary Paulsen

Tucket's Gold is a 1999 novel by Gary Paulsen. It features the main character Francis Tucket and his adopted children struggling to stay out of reach of the Comancheros.

For a 16-year-old boy out in the world alone for the first time, every day’s an education in the hard work and boredom of migrant labor; every day teaches him something more about friendship, or hunger, or profanity, or lust—always lust. He learns how a poker game, or hitching a ride, can turn deadly. He discovers the …

Call Me Francis Tucket is the second novel in The Tucket Adventures by Gary Paulsen. Now 15, Francis Tucket is determined to return to civilization. Only a year before, he was heading west by wagon train with his family, captured by the Pawnees and rescued by a savvy, one-armed mountain man. It was published in 1995 …