Wild Salvation: A Novel

Johnson is accused of assaulting a white woman, a deadly charge for a black man in 1875. Knowing he’ll be lynched if he stays in St. Andrews, Indiana, Johnson flees to the grassy plains of Kansas looking for the freedom unavailable to him back East. What Johnson doesn’t know is that the woman’s father is a powerful businessman determined to track him down. For a man on the run, the West seems like the perfect place for someone withdrawn like Johnson to become a new person, until a top Pinkerton agent named Cole Charles comes into town hunting outlaws.

Johnson finds himself in Flatridge, Kansas where he is hired as a stable hand. It’s here he meets an aspiring writer named Margret Herston who makes advances toward him. Johnson is wary of involvement with another white woman, yet he falls for Margret anyway. When Cole Charles comes to town and discovers he is a wanted man, Johnson has no choice but to flee. Johnson escapes to Fort Worth, Texas, and meets a rowdy woman named Eddie who is quick with a joke and even quicker with her pistol. Despite his lack of experience, Eddie hires Johnson to be a wrangler on a cattle drive made up of other black cowboys headed to Wyoming. With Cole Charles on his trail, the cattle drive will take Johnson further than he ever imagined and force him to confront his greatest fear when he comes face to face with Cole Charles himself.

WILD SALVATION is a western novel that explores diverse perspectives on race and the role of women in the Old West through an epic action-packed adventure. Readers will see a side of the West that has often been left out in fiction as Johnson tangles with bandits, hired gunmen, and racism.