The journey continues in the third book of the series, as the three travelers have arrived into Charleston!A desperate note comes from Armondo Whyle asking Sampson, Arley, and Joshua to come and take his daughter away from their plantation that would soon be visited by a band of hated Redshirts intent on subjecting Deanna to a horrible fate because she had resisted the advances of their leader.In the gunfight that follows, six Redshirts are killed and the four still alive are put in leg irons and sent home. With the first battle won, Joshua begins to train the black field hands who once were slaves how to fight back.When the Redshirts attack again, in greater numbers, they are no match for a determined army who wants only their freedom.Fear begins to spread through the outlaw ranks. Oscar Blaylock feels it is time to invite Arley and company out to Black Seed. Once there, he takes Arley on a tour of the grounds, while his mistress, Serena, takes Sampson on a tour of the house. But upstairs in a room alone, her warning is clear, “Go home, Mister Sampson. Oscar knows the real reason you are here. Soon he will kill you all.”But the black army grows stronger, and it is not long before the remaining Redshirts are sent downriver to the same waiting slave ship, never to be heard from again.Only Blaylock is left to face Sampson in the yard at Black Seed during a triple wedding with an ending no one expected.
What was it like to fight against the winds of change brought on by the Civil War?
I likes this story! I liked it a lot. It is a sprawling saga that had its beginnings on the high plains of Colorado and came full circle across the western frontier, back to where John Sampson was born and grew to become the special man that could tell this story. Arley Ruttlinger, wild and untamed was with him, fighting by his side in every battle, and making love to him in the quiet moments they managed to share together. It was when they returned to Charleston where Joshua found his own woman and vowed to kill Oscar Blaylock, the wealthy planter who kept her coming into his bed. A great story of the taming of the West, and of a war that raged even as the Civil War ended; to let the white man and the black man work together to rebuild the South.