2014 Peacemaker Award Finalist for Best Western Novel... Sarah Jennings, a blond and pretty 17 year-old, is traveling West with her family from Pittsburgh to San Francisco in 1849. She is left behind in Independence, Missouri (the start of the Oregon Trail) because, as her father Johnathan writes in his journal on May 19, 1949, "A savage fever came upon Sarah yesterday and she slipped into darkness as we readied to depart. Doctors told us she will surely perish. And if we stay, we may fall prey to the same illness. If we linger longer, we will forgo our journey west. I have left behind sums...

The second of five books in The Jennings Papers series (www.TheJenningsPapers.com), Mr. Meeks' story is told through unpublished notes taken in the summer of 1867 by Damian Hopkins, a young reported from the Daily Examiner, a San Francisco newspaper. The life of Mr. Meeks unfolds as Meeks fights off an advancing terminal illness and recounts his years without regret to the reporter. Born in 1812 in Lake Champlain, New York, William Meeks grew up as an only child among dairy cows and apple orchards. His time with the Abenaki, a local American Indian tribe, caught his imagination, as did the...