The Reckoning in the Grass
The small, rough-hewn oak stake driven deep into the black Kansas soil was more than a boundary marker; it was an oath. For Big John, Beth Ann, and Michael, it represented the end of a year defined by loss and flight, and the defiant beginning of a new one. When the sun rose on January 1, 1824, illuminating their small, half-finished shelter, the family had traded the constant, low-grade terror of the journey for the acute, immediate demands of settling. They had survived the unforgiving wilderness, but now they faced the true test: making that wilderness yield a home.
The Reckoning in the Grass picks up where The Western Promise: 1823 left off, plunging the family into the brutal reality of their claim. The river bottom land promised fertile bounty, but it first demanded backbreaking, non-stop labor to clear, break, and protect. Their immediate concerns are elemental: surviving the deep chill of the prairie winter, defending their meager food stores from the wild, and building four walls sturdy enough to withstand the elements.
But the most pressing dangers remain human. The boot prints and the missing shovel prove that they are not alone. Claim jumpers and desperate vagrants haunt the fringes of the territory, eyeing their good water source and fertile ground. Moreover, their act of settlement is an act of aggression against the Kanza and Osage nations, who view every structure erected as a permanent, hostile incursion. John's infamous past did not disappear upon crossing the Missouri border; it merely exchanged old enemies for new, fiercer ones.
This book is the story of that fight for permanence—a reckoning where every decision costs dearly, where the promise of a better life is paid for in calloused hands, sleepless nights, and the constant threat of violence. They claimed the land; now, the land and its existing inhabitants will demand their price.
