In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree Author:Michael A. McLellan Born into slavery, Henry's young life is spent working in tobacco drying sheds on Missouri plantations. Freed at the onset of the Civil War, he's alone, starving, and on the run from Confederate militiamen. — Lying broken and near death in the middle of the Kansas prairie, Henry is rescued by a Cheyenne hunting party and nursed back to he... more »alth by Standing Elk, a tribal elder and medicine man. Standing Elk claims he foresaw Henry's coming, and befriends him.
Five years later, Clara Hanfield, the daughter of a powerful New York shipping magnate, escapes her tyrannical father and travels west in pursuit of John Elliot, the man she loves. John, a newly appointed U.S. Army lieutenant, is sent to the Dakota Territory in disgrace when his forbidden love affair with Clara is discovered by Clara's father. Once there, John reluctantly participates in a government conspiracy to incite an all-out war with the Indians; a war meant to finally eliminate them as an obstacle to the westward expansion. After participating in a raid on an Indian camp, John suffers self-doubt and shame as his morality struggles against his loyalty to the U.S. government.
Henry, now an army scout and Indian interpreter, finds himself caught in the middle.
Aided by Clara, John, and Standing Elk, Henry must battle hatred, greed, and the ghosts of his past during this turbulent and troubling time in American history.« less