West of Westport

De: Alan E Craven

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Long before the first Southern states had left the Union and before Fort Sumter in South Carolina fell, sectarian violence dominated the Kansas Territory: buildings and crops were burned, settlers beaten or shot, so that across the country, newspaper headlines called the Territory “Bleeding Kansas.” In a sequel to Till We Have Built Jerusalem--which followed Ezra Middleton during the Civil War years in Kansas--West of Westport treats Ezra, a young attorney and correspondent for the St. Louis Globe Democrat, during the tumultuous post-war years along the Kansas Border. Kansans still did not like Missouri and, for their part, Missourians felt a similar enmity toward their neighbors to the west. Although the town of Lawrence had changed after the War with the arrival of the Central Overland Company (the telegraph) and the Pacific Railroad, old memories persisted along with new fears and grievances. Ezra has finally decided to abandon his work as a news correspondent to concentrate on his profession as an attorney in Lawrence, surrounded by old friends, Eli Foster, Big Ears King, the half-breed Little Joe Oscar, the disgraced Governor Charles Robinson, and the enigmatic Missourian Colonel Frederick Maypole, and Ezra’s wife, Hannah, and their growing family. But, more violence lay ahead.