“Mamma, he could’ve killed you! It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last!”
“He didn’t.”
“I could’ve killed him.”
Her mouth dropped open. “No, Tom! You’re your Papa’s boy. Killing’s not in you.”
After ten years of his stepfather’s cruelty toward his family, Tom Morgan determines to move his mother and two brothers to Texas where their uncle has offered to help them make a fresh start. Putting together his plans, he makes a bitter discovery: what drove his beloved younger sister Hannah to leave home three years earlier. As he struggles with his hatred and rage, his family’s survival weighs heavily, and he faces unalterable--and unimaginable--decisions.
Tom’s long life, spanning post-Civil War Arkansas to the aftermath of World War II, is haunted by what he is forced to do during those four July days in 1876. The love of his family, their abiding faith in his commitment to do what’s right for all of them, and the memory of his Papa, who taught him that the measure of a man is his respect for the lives of others as well as his own, helps him live--and die-- with the consequences of his actions.
Based on an actual family incident, the true circumstances of which are forever lost in time, the author has crafted a story of perseverance and survival.
