The Far Land

Eleven souls. Twelve hundred miles. One promise: everyone arrives, and no one is left behind.

Maine, 1862. The hill farm is failing, the bank's man is walking the fence line, and every letter from California sings the same song: Elias's brother Cyrus struck it rich in the gold country, and there is silk and comfort waiting for the whole family. All they have to do is quit.

Instead, Elias sells out and points his wagons west - one hundred sixty acres of free Kansas land under the new Homestead Act, and not one dollar of his brother's gold.

What waits on the Smoky Hill is nine years of everything the frontier can do to a family. Road agents who take more than money. Smoke over Lawrence. Drought, grasshoppers, prairie fire. The railroad roaring west and the cattle money at Abilene - and a widow's boy in Wichita who will one day carry a name the whole world knows, repaying a kindness when it matters most.

Through it all runs the war no gun can settle: two brothers who love each other - one who believes in gold, and one who believes in soil.

The Far Land is a traditional western in the classic style - real places, real years, honest grit, a family worth rooting for, and an ending that keeps every promise it makes. Some dust and blood, a quiet thread of love, and justice that costs something. If you miss the westerns you grew up on, this one was written for you.

A complete, standalone novel - no cliffhangers.