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 fact I’d brought these holy words along with me, signaled an unconscious intent to look deeper into my life than merely examining my relationship with Ethan. I needed to understand why a man’s need for male love roused such enmity that it had cost Otter and James their lives. In Billy Strobaw’s time—and in Otter’s youth—many of the tribes of the area had accepted and even honored berdaches, a word adopted from the French to indicate deviants.


I knew from reading Billy’s journal that he had proudly borne the Lakota name of the Red Win-tay for over half his lifetime. On the other hand, he carefully hid his proclivities when he moved among the whites—his own people.Billy had been one of the first white men in this part of the Dakotas and had fully embraced the Lakota concept of the Circle of Life upon the discovery of his love for my grandfather, Cut Hand.


Chapter 71