Overview
The Adventure and Romance of the West wrapped in a silver bolo of the American spirit. This is our story.
Third of sixteen books of the Threads West An American Saga series which is being compared by reviewers, authors and readers to Lonesome Dove, Centennial, Louis L'Amour (with steam) and has been referred to as the Gone with the Wind of the West. The multiple award winning, multiple #1 best-selling series bursts with the adventure, romance and promise of historical America and the West.
The epic saga of Threads West begins in 1855 with Book One. We meet the first of four richly-textured, complex generations of unforgettable characters. The separate lives of these driven men and independent women are drawn to a common destiny that beckons seductively from the wild and remote flanks of the American West. In Book Two they are swept into the dangerous currents of the far-distant frontier by the mysterious rivers of fate, the power of the land and the American spirit. Their turbulent journeys are heartbreaking quests intertwined with romance and adversity, passions and pathos, despair and triumph.
The characters are magnetically drawn to the unknown. They are restless and ambitious, and in search of place and future. Secret maps, hidden ambitions, and magnetic attractions inherent in lives forged by the conflicting fires of love and loss, hope and sorrow, life and death, shape their futures and the destinies of their lineage.
In Book Three, Uncompahgre - where water turns rock red, the men and women of the saga have reached their initial destination: pre-Denver, Cherry Creek. Now they are each faced with life altering decisions — to return to Europe or crest the Rockies to settle in the remote Uncompahgre Valley, extreme SW edge of the Kansas Territory. Some must decide to pursue or abandon torrid love affairs that have flowered on the dangerous journey from Europe and across America. The elderly slave couple, Oglala Sioux family, and renegade — and his young, traumatized captive introduced in Maps of Fate are woven ever more tightly to the arc of the story — their tragedy, passion and triumph-filled tales weaving into the cloth of a collective destiny.
The brave, passion-filled characters of Uncompahgre try to establish or maintain life in this unknown wilderness, all swept unknowingly into the tumultuous vortex of momentous changes shaping the United States and the West between 1855 and 1875, the years ensconced in the Maps of Fate era of novels of the series. Land, love, gold, culture and the burden of family responsibility shape them as this vanguard of generations loves and struggles in the beautifully vibrant but unforgiving landscape of the West. The personal conflicts inherent to these brave, passion-filled characters are exacerbated by a nation in transition, the budding enmity between North and South, deep bonds and lethal enmities with Native Americans and the accelerating melting pot of diverse cultures that marks this magical moment in American history.
On the front range of the Rockies, a newly spawned Denver City, built on the banks of Cherry Creek, booms with the impact of gold discovered in the Pikes Peak area and the Ouray, San Juan and Uncompahgre mountain ranges. The fires of deadly tumult between the states sweep west. The "resolution" of the "Indian Problem" leaves families and hearts broken, forever staining the pages of American history.
Momentous change continues, igniting further greed and compassion, courage and treachery, rugged independence, torrid passions and fierce loyalties.
The decades of the Maps of Fate era novels of Threads West book series become the crucible of souls of generations, the building of the heart of the nation, destiny of a people, and the relentless energy and beauty of the western landscape. This is the ongoing story of us.
Set in authentic locations on three continents and in the jagged peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the life threads of the characters — whose personalities are forged on the anvil of the land and shaped by the spirit of America — live, love, struggle, die, fail and succeed. They have neither country nor culture in common — but the textured, complex and conflicted lives of these independent men and women become part of the fabric of the undulating landscape of the West, and are woven into the rich and adventurous tapestry of an emerging nation and the ever evolving American spirit.
The romance of America, her people and her spirit and the West. This is not only their story. It is our story. It is Threads West, An American Saga.