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

Asa Peeler had moved past the Strobaw family history centered around Teacher’s Mead. This story was about Matthew and me. Bear’s devotion to Crazy Horse. His arrest and troubles with the army. My pursuit of the jail wagon through a prairie fire to dog my brother’s steps all the way to Fort Robinson down in Nebraska. The way Touch the Clouds had used my unusual hair to effect our release and even the killing of the brutal Sergeant Hanlihan, a man obsessed with murdering both of us. Was it necessary for Peeler to unearth another killing of a white man? Likely one Landreth didn’t already know about.


Did any of those fingerprint dots linger around to tie me to the lynching of Reverend Jeremiah Berglund? That one would stir up a pot load of trouble even though that devil’s spawn had been responsible for Otter’s and James’s deaths.


Chapter 82