Blessings From the Four Winds

"Blessings from the Four Winds" is a combination of western, historical, romance fiction story-telling creative non-fiction since it inspired by the life of a real person, the author's great-grandfather. As a young man, he worked as a cowboy on cattle drives, driving herds from Waco, Texas to Dodge City, Kansas. It was during one of these cattle drives that he happens upon a beautiful Indian girl bathing in the Red River in Indian Territory. Set in 1885, the storyline follows their unsanctioned courtship that he was, warned about. In the beginning she fights off all of his amorous attempts to get close to her, until he is able to devise a way to win her over completely once and for all, or make her rebuke him. The storyline includes small vignettes about other colorful characters whose lives are weaved into a tapestry of the lives of the story's hero and heroine. There is a long train ride by passengers unsettled because Indians are on-board, visits to a Choctaw Indian village, recounting a Civil War battle by Negro soldiers, and three sermons by a charismatic Negro Christian pastor. By the end everyone feels the blessings of the four winds according to long-held beliefs and due to the uplifting remarks from the story's characters about the brotherhood of races in America and the promise of the Constitution's principles.