Some stories begin as ideas. Others begin as obligations.
This one began as a question that wouldn’t let go: What happens to ordinary people when history moves on without them? After more than a decade of writing, revising, and living with that question, I’m finally nearing the publication of a novel that grew out of it.
Between the Whistle and the Gun
I’ve been working on this novel for a long time. Long enough that it stopped feeling like a project and started feeling like something I owed to the story itself.
Between the Whistle and the Gun is a work of historical fiction set in the final decades of the 19th century, in a country that no longer exists on any modern map: Indian Territory.
It is a place caught between worlds—between treaties and treachery, between law and lawlessness, between survival and erasure.
At the center of the story are Clint Franklin and Vivvy Tuttle, two young people whose lives become entangled with forces far larger than either of them imagined. Railroads carve through the land. Outlaws stalk the margins. Presidents make promises from distant offices. And ordinary people are left to live with the consequences.
This is not a novel about famous men alone, though some appear. It is about the people who live in the wake of history—those who must decide whether to bend, resist, or endure when the rules are written elsewhere.
Much of the story is rooted in real events: train robberies, political maneuvering in Washington, the collapse of tribal sovereignty, and the quiet heroism of people trying to build a life where stability is constantly under threat. The fiction lives in the spaces between the records—the private conversations, the moral choices, the cost of doing what feels right when the outcome is uncertain.
At its heart, this is a story about heritage. About what is taken, what survives, and what must be defended even when the odds are overwhelming.
I’m nearing the end of the long road with this book now. As publication approaches, I wanted to begin sharing more about it here—not as marketing noise, but as context. This story has asked a great deal of me over the years. I hope, when it’s finally in your hands, it proves worthy of your time as well.
If you’d like to follow the journey toward publication, I’ll be sharing updates and reflections here as the book makes its way into the world.
Thank you.
