Steve Brigman
It began as an Indian trail from the Ozark Plateau to the buffalo plains. The Army converted it into a road from St. Louis to Fort Smith. When the telegraph came, it became Wire Road; Old Wire Road after the lines were cut during the Civil War. It was an important avenue west, carrying men with gold in their eyes toward California. Trail of Tears victims were buried along its way. The Butterfield Overland Stage linked California to the East. Troops met on the Wire Road during two major Civil War battles.
This sweeping saga chronicles a family through generations of love, loss and survival. Through it all, they remain linked by special gifts inherited from distant ancestors.
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James is ten when he becomes one of the more than the 200,000 children taken from eastern orphanages and sent out west on the infamous orphan trains, meeting a precious little girl on his journey with whom he shares an instant crush. They’re separated when he’s adopted in Missouri, but find each other as adults, already falling in love when they realize their shared past. Jimmy and Venice marry, have a son and continue to build one the Ozarks’ most renown ranches, a haven from persistent conflict with locals. When racist thugs assault the patriarch of the black family working on the place, James and his foreman mete out harsh payback, but the beautiful Crawford home is burned to the ground in retaliation, leaving everyone on the ranch on guard, and in fear. Venice’s outspoken activism in the anti-war movement, women’s suffrage and prohibition fuels the constant friction with jealous townsfolk resentful of the power her purse wields in local affairs. Still, the ranch remains a peaceful refuge, that is until stakes are raised to the highest level, and James is thrust into a life-or-death decision.
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In story after story, Steve Brigman weaves a narrative pitting characters against powerful natural forces as they navigate internal unrest in a search for existential resolution … A man starved for validation takes on a giant fish; a native woman hunts a mysterious foe to preserve her place in a male-dominated culture; an aging hunter faces his mortality in the presence of a long-sought-after trophy; a couple struggles with the supernatural for their home; and a boy hunts manhood in an attempt to prove himself through an unlikely triumph. Into Those Woods challenges readers to explore man’s complexity in search for light at the end of the journey.
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