Those Bones at Goliad

A sweeping tale of 19th-century Texas...

When young Shelby Whitmire spies a flatboat coming down the Mississippi to Natchez, he doesn't know that two aboard are on the run to Mexico's Texas territory. How could the motherless boy foresee his adult years unfolding in that wilderness? After fiery speeches in 1835 to convince others to help Texas win independence, it is friendship and heartbreak driving Shelby across the Sabine River and onto perilous trails. No survivor from the spring of revolution forgets the Alamo, but Goliad haunts at any hour, too. And all Shelby Whitmire ever wanted was to wake each morning knowing how a good man would live his day.

Here is the most human side of the Texas Revolution, the honorable remains of glory and tragedy. From the South brave soldiers came in the cause of freedom, though their own states were dependent on the servitude of slaves and the displacement of native tribes. Their courage won the war, but Judith Austin Mills reminds us that true freedom, then and now, requires our steady devotion to humanity.