Reap the South Wind

Lucy Walsh's heart remains with the struggling town of Paragon Springs, but she feels beholden to her husband, Admire, to make the run to the Cherokee Strip for new land. Admire married her when few men would have, and raised her half-Sioux daughter, Rachel, as his own.

When Admire is killed for his Strip claim, Lucy, grieving, leases the land to his cowboy friends and returns to Paragon Springs and gets by on her tidy farm.

In 1910, an eccentric new neighbor, Tom Reilly, begins building a new-fangled "aeroplane" in his barn. Lucy is convinced that he is onto something that could help her town and is determined to build an aeroplane plant with oil money she has come into from her Oklahoma land.

Together, they face ridicule from friends and family, go to air shows and learn from other aviation pioneers, and deal with the shallow aviatrix Sophie, in order to find a way to lay out plans for Paragon Spring's future.

©2002 Irene Bennett Brown (P)2004 Books in Motion