Reuben Cox is on the cusp of adolescence and living an idyllic life on his family's horse farm in Kentucky, receiving a classical education from his tutor and learning about the horse-raising business, martial skills expected of a man, and the responsibilities of duty and honor from his stern but loving father. Through her example, his mother provides for the growth of his heart and conscience. Suddenly, the outbreak of the Civil War bursts this idyll to pieces, and as a young teen, Reuben finds himself riding with Quantrill's raiders. Despite his youth, Reuben becomes skilled and efficient at the violent duties of war, but at the war's end, he is unable to return to his former life. Among many of the young male diaspora from the South, he seeks his fortune in the post-war Texas cattle industry. In Texas, he finds himself caught up in another battle, a range war between two wealthy cattle barons. Even more so than the Civil War, this range war will not only force the limits of Reuben's martial abilities but also put his sense of duty, honor, pride, justice, and love to the ultimate test. The story weaves in and out of the lives of three families who, having built edifices of power and wealth, must face the fragility of those walls. This is a story about building strength out of courage and is also a story about the dangers of pride.

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Rebellion was recurrent in the Highlands because the Gaels (Scoti) were an often-oppressed indigenous minority in the nation, Scotland, to which they gave their name. They spoke a language, Gaelic, few outsiders would learn, and had their own family and social system, the clans. Warfare was bloody, culminating in the catastrophe of Culloden Moor during the doomed quest to restore the Stuart kingship to all of Britain. Economic hardship, including the near-genocidal Clearances, in which tenant farmers were replaced with sheep, drove the Gaels from the glens and islands, so that most today live in the diaspora, including millions in North America. Although the Gaels lack a single genetic identity, they clearly draw from distinct roots in the Irish, Norse and Picts. Despite their hardship, the Gaels are also presented in romantic portrayals by the artistic elite of other nations. This book offers ways in which the reader might find roots and ancestry in unfamiliar terrain. Chapters discuss the landscape and language of the Highlanders, the rise of clans, feuds and invasions, and eventual emigration.

I am advised by my publishers that this book is to be included in their catalogue of humorous publications, and this friendly warning gives me an opportunity to say that however humorous it may be in effect, its intention is perfectly serious; and, even if it were otherwise, it seems to me that a volume written wholly in dialect must have its solemn, not to say melancholy, features. With respect to the Folk-Lore series, my purpose has been to preserve the legends themselves in their original simplicity, and to wed them permanently to the quaint dialect-if, indeed, it can be called a dialect-through the medium of which they have become a part of the domestic history of every Southern family; and I have endeavored to give to the whole a genuine flavor of the old plantation...