Native American Literature, Family Saga Fiction, Western, Biographical Fiction, Western
Date Published: 06-01-2025
You can almost feel the red dust clinging to your skin and catch the
faint scent of jasmine in the air. This is Indian Territory at the edge of
everything—law and lawlessness, hope and heartbreak, where the lines
between right and wrong blur with every sunset.
Told with vivid detail, this is the story of a man caught between loyalty and
his past, between a brother’s shadow and the light of his own becoming.
A tale of love, betrayal, and the quiet courage it takes to change your fate.
From a stagecoach town in Tennessee to the first railroad towns of the Indian
Territory, we delve into the lives of the charismatic and flawed brothers,
Matt and Robert. Their sibling dynamic shapes the lives of the entire Brown
family, steering them down a road of familial struggles and cultural clashes.
Matt always idolized his oldest brother, Robert – a smooth-talking
charmer who taught him at a young age to live hard and win big. Following
Robert’s footsteps, Matt is drawn into a life of high-stakes games and
deception. Then he meets Milla. Sharp-eyed, brave, and unafraid to speak the
truth, Milla is a woman rooted in her Choctaw heritage, carrying both strength
and sorrow in equal measure. For the first time, Matt imagines a different
future. But the past doesn’t let go easily and buried secrets never stay
buried for long, clawing their way back to the surface when you least expect
it. Now, Matt must choose between what consumes him and the life he wants to
build.
Set against the raw beauty of the Choctaw Nation, this is a powerful story of blood ties and hard choices, of the people we love and the ones we betray. Gritty, tender, and unforgettable—this is where redemption begins.
Excerpt
Albert kicked the door once, twice.
The window lit up with the light of a lamp. Through the window he saw Milla jump out of bed. He kicked the door harder.
Milla wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and stood at the bedroom door. “I told you I don’t want you here anymore,” she yelled. “You can just go...”
“Milla, open the door! It’s Albert!” He kicked again, struggling to hold Matt upright. “Matt’s hurt bad!”
She dashed to the door and let her brother-in-law in.
Albert held Matt tight around the waist and draped Matt’s left arm over his shoulder as the pair stumbled across the threshold. “Help me get him to the bed. I’m going for Doc Poor.”
Milla lifted Matt’s other arm over her shoulder and sat him on the bed, holding him steady. “Hurry,” she gasped.
Albert grabbed the coat hanging by the front door and ran out of the house.
“What have you gotten yourself into, Matt?” Milla pulled his coat off and unbuckled his holster, laying it on the nightstand. The sight of his shirt and pants covered in blood and dried mud sent a chill through her veins. He fell sideways on the bed and then she saw it—the cut on the back of his shirt.
“Owww!” Matt cupped his hand protectively over his wound, but the pain was too intense. He cried out again.
“You hold on, Matt. Albert went to find Doctor Poor. You just hold on now.” It was an order.
Matt gasped for air, then spoke in fits of agony. “They... got... Robert.” He strained to sit up and failed. His body fell limp, then he fell silent.
“Who got him?” Milla tried to roll Matt over, but he wouldn’t budge. Gasping at the sight of the blood on the bed, she backed away, hands trembling.
Is he dead?
Did he die?
Albert bolted straight up in bed and strained to listen. What was that? He thought he heard a horse neigh, but all he heard now was the creaking of the loose shutter and his own breath. But there it was again, the sound of a horse.
He stretched to look out the window. And there it was, the shape of a horse in the front yard.
Throwing off the blanket, Albert fumbled for his pocket watch on the nightstand and held it to the window. In the moon’s light, he saw it was near two in the morning. The horse was neighing again, louder and longer this time.
Albert glanced out the window as he slipped on his pants; it was Matt’s horse, Girl. The moon lit the corner of the yard where she stood, stomping her front right hoof on the frosted ground in distress.
In his bare feet, he flung open the door and rushed to the panicked horse. Matt sat slumped in the saddle, unconscious or dead. He couldn’t tell.
“Matt?” Albert touched Matt’s leg, but he nearly slid from the saddle at Albert’s touch. “Matt?”
The blood on his coat and shirt told Albert all he needed to know. It was bad, and it looked like he’d been bleeding for a while.
Without thinking, Albert mounted the horse, wrapping his arms around Matt to hold him steady, and rode as fast as he could to Matt’s house. Doc Poor lived on the back side of the field behind Matt’s place. He would take Matt home, then go wake the doctor at once.
About the Author
Raised on the beaches of South Texas, R.G. Stanford has always been
drawn to stories that transcend time. That passion was ignited in 1976 with
the discovery of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, and deepened
with The Feast of All Saints just a few years later. Though historical fiction
wasn’t an immediate calling, a personal journey into genealogy changed
everything.
With no close relatives nearby, R.G. Stanford turned to online resources in
search of extended family. That search became a twenty-year journey through
genealogy websites, Federal Census records, the National Archives, and old
newspapers. Along the way, R.G. Stanford uncovered incredible stories about
her family and the people who once lived in the Choctaw Nation, Indian
Territory.
Compelled to record the truth of her family in the lore, sprinkled with
imagination, R.G. Stanford is a history lover, a research buff, and a
passionate genealogy enthusiast. She is also a mother, a grandmother, and a
teller of stories, now living near Orlando.
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