Author of Acclaimed Originals

During the polio scare of the 1950s, a boy's parents send him for the summer from his small-towm Florida home to the refuge of his grandparents' farm in rural Alabama. He settles into country life with Papa and Bigmother. The locals nickname him Cracker, after the term for Florida cowboys. One day he and Papa go to a livestock auction and Papa lets him buy a small mule. The mule turns out to be blind and Cracker must suffer ridicule while caring for the animal he comes to love. 

When buffalo hide hunter Quentin McLeod rescues Carlotta Mainord, a Texas ranch woman taken captive by Comanche raiders, the two survive battles with the Comanches, flash floods and white brigands only to wind up in even more dangerous straits when they make it to apparent safety in Ft. Sumner New Mexico. Carlotta Mainord, injured and helpless in a coma, is placed under the care of Edward Richards, an English expatriate and respected rancher who secretly trades with Comanche raiders.

'Professor' A.J. Hayes is hired to serve as a teacher in San Juan, where he manages to upset the community by not only instantly wedding Rachel McNew - a young woman arriving on a marriage train - but disciplining the son of Curt Tucker, the local mine owner, and brawling with Tucker in public. Fired from the school, A.J. and Rachel - still happily married despite everything - move to a cabin in a valley.   

Little Brother Real Snake is the coming-of-age tale of Red Squirrel, a Plains Indian youth. Though the son of a respected warrior who died bravely in battle, Red Squirrel is slight of stature and a daydreamer who faces several trials on his way to manhood -- with two unfriendly members of his own tribe, an Apache warrior, and in a moving final scene with a much-feared snake. In accepting these challenges, Red Squirrel grows in self-knowledge and learns the lessons of his elders.

In 1836, Mexico's president Santa Anna vowed to drive American settlers out of Texas, which at that time was a Mexican territory whose residents wanted to make it into an independent state. Santa Anna sent his armies ravaging across the state, sending citizens fleeing toward safety in the United States. This pell-mell, mass, desperate attempt at escape became known as “the Runaway Scrape.” The conflict culminated in the Battle of San Jacinto.

Old Wild Man Terry is the story of thirteen years old fraternal twins Erin and Fred Burgess, their parents and Yacqui/Mexican ranch hands and thirteen years old son Jaime in the Big Bend of Texas in 1915. The Burgess family has moved back to an ancestral ranch for the health of Mrs. Burgess who suffers from tuberculosis are attempting to raise Missouri Foxtrotter horses as well as Foxtrotter/mustang hybrid for the ranch horse business to supplement.