Oklahoma Odyssey

A 2022 Great Group Reads selection 2023 Silver Medal in Western Traditional Fiction for the Will Rogers Medallion Award In late fall of 1892 outlaw Eddie Mole gallops down the main street of Jericho Springs, Kansas, where he robs and shoots dead the freighter Barney Kreider. Some urge Barneys son Ulysses (Euly) to take revenge, but Euly is a Mennonite and Mennonites dont seek revenge. Instead, Euly plots how to make his fortune with the aid of his half-Osage sister, Kate, and his friend Johnny, an Osage farmhand. The three make a plan to sell goods and livestock to the settlers converging on Caldwell, Kansas, for the land run going on in the Cherokee Outlet. When Johnny tracks Eddie into the Cherokee Outlet, he witnesses Buffalo Soldiers evicting Eddie from a ranch, leaving it public domain, and Johnny and Kate make the run for that beautiful land. Euly follows close behind, even as Eddie, riding from Arkansas City, tries to reclaim his old ranch. John Morts narrative is an anti-revenge novelalways opting for nonviolence. But theres violence nevertheless, as Eddies and Barneys survivors converge in a rousing finish. Though this novel uses some of the architecture and motifs of traditional westerns, it is carefully researched and set in the unfolding of a pivotal, neglected historical event.