summary 

In 1844, seventeen-year-old Moses Cole leaves home when his pa lays him out with a number two shovel, walks from the Shenandoah farmstead to Pennsylvania and stumbles into the First Dragoons as an underage recruit. So begins the story’s geographical arc which carries the reader from Virginia to San Diego and back through the journey of Private Moses Cole. Its emotional arc includes loss, gain, and hard lessons as Moses Cole comes-of-age before returning to his soul mate back home.

The novel’s historical backbone is the Army of the West and the march of the Mormon Battalion from Council Bluffs to San Diego in 1846 to 1847 during the Mexican-American War. 

why i wrote this novel

I am not LDS* and did not know this history until I stumbled on it while researching another story. The march of the Mormon Battalion – the longest march in U.S. military history at some 1,900 miles, which included four laundresses who made the entire march, two of whom were pregnant – captivated me. The people who made the march and the qualities they summoned to do so, including courage, stamina, determination, faith, and self-reliance in service to community and its larger purpose, are inspirational. Theirs is a grand and important history of the American West that should be familiar to the American public. Currently it is not, and I hope this book will change that.

Similar to this, and entwined with these events, is the saga of the First Dragoons – forerunner to the U.S. Cavalry – whose march preceded that of the Mormon Battalion but followed a shorter, though not easier, route from Fort Leavenworth to San Diego. The Battle of San Pasqual with its deadly engagement with Californios lancers, which in large measure featured sword against lance, is also a part of the West that should not be forgotten.

Horses are a big part of it. With a cattle ranch in the family, and the countless hours I’ve spent on horseback working with livestock and covering ranch country moving, working, or in search of cattle or sheep, horses hold a firm and tender spot in my heart. This history, or history similar to it, would have happened without horses but to me it would not have been as compelling.

Much non-fiction has been written about these events. While engaging, historical narratives tend to lack the emotional pull that fiction provides. When well told, historical fiction brings history to life and makes the reader feel present while the events unfold. Characters become real and immediate. They become present in the life of the reader. To me this is the missing link needed to engage the modern reader in historical events. This is the mission or charge of historical fiction. Others have assured me this novel achieves that. To the extent that it does, this labor-of-love will have accomplished its purpose.

*LDS stands for Latter-day Saint, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the era of this novel, the common terms of the time were “Mormon” and the “Mormon Church.” To be true to the language of the period, I used those terms in this novel.