Young Gillom Rogers has just given the coup de grace to a famous gunfighter involved in a bloody saloon shootout in 1901 El Paso, Texas. After swiping J.B. Books's matched Remington pistols off his body, Gillom thinks he may be able to ride this spectacle to fame and glory as the last shootist. But Gillom is an eighteen-year-old with lots of growing up to do, and showing off his new pistols quickly gets him into a gunfight he didn't bargain for.

Gillom sets out for adventure, determined to become a shootist like his hero, John Bernard Books. On his dangerous journey into manhood, he runs into yellow journalists, a New Mexican horse breaker, and a train robber. When he meets a Hispanic saloon dancer named Anel in the booming copper mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, Gillom Rogers is forced to reconsider what kind of man he really wants to be.

Miles Swarthout's The Last Shootist is the sequel to one of the most famous Westerns ever written, and concludes the tale of a junior shootist's coming-of-age in a dazzling gunfight in a deadly pimp's whorehouse, as a trio of fiery teenagers ride hard into a new twentieth century.