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

I threw myself out of the saddle and knelt beside Ethan. He was struggling to sit up, one hand clasping his left side, red with blood. I tore off my shirt and pressed it against the wound to slow the bleeding. As I ran to the house for Otter’s Pandora’s Box of medications, I stepped around the body of the woman and noticed she was barely out of her teens. She hadn’t even had time to grow hard looking.


As I came through the door, I halted in my tracks at the sight of a baby wrapped in a blanket lying on the bearskin rug. I recovered my wits and yanked the box of medicines from the pantry and raced back to Ethan. I used yarrow and plantain as astringents to curtail the bleeding and goldenseal powder to disinfect the wound, which did not appear to be life-threatening. I put poultices of yarrow to the entry and exit points and bound them in place with strips of white cloth.


Chapter 88