Thirty-two-year-old mixed blood John Strobaw, known to the Sioux as Medicine Hair, returns to his Turtle Crick Farm after a six-year exile on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Grief-stricken at the loss of his mate and lover Matthew Brand, known as Shambling Bear, at the Battle of Wounded Knee, he struggles to become a farmer again while fighting an internal battle to let go of the past and face his future. Will that future be with his best friend Winter Bird or with Pretty Face, an outrageous flirt who hasn’t yet decided who he is?<br><br>But before he can come to grips with this, John faces several battles. Will his former friends and neighbors accept him now the Indian War has come to an end? Can John forgive those same friends and neighbors after the murderous ambush of the Sioux by the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee? Or survive the hostility of an Indian-hating sheriff named Charles Landreth and protect himself against the mindless fear and loathing for Two Spirits, men who love men?

Wastelakapi…Beloved

The calm that had overtaken me at the prosecutor’s office flew away on the breeze, but I put on my Indian face and stood my ground. “If you’re any kind of a reporter at all, you’ll already know it wasn’t a murder case. Self-defense.”


“Yes.” I avoided his trap, but I could see he wasn’t going to let it alone. “Let me amend that,” I said. “There was a murder. The murder of my five-year-old nephew, Gabriel. And just in case you think that’s of no consequence because he’s mynephew, let me remind you he was the son of Captain Gideon Haleworthy.”


“I don’t hold one life dearer than another, Mr. Strobaw.”


My tongue was moving to say that he was a better man than the county’s sheriff when I realized those words would likely provide the headline for his piece. I tempered my words. “Admirable. But unusual.”


“So, you believe native lives are considered second class around here?”


Chapter 70