Along the Trail to THUNDER HAWK

Adventure, romance, intrigue, and justice await Along the Trail to Thunder Hawk. Born to a US Army infantry sergeant father and a Lakota mother, Bob Gilland struggles to build a ranch, find love, and win justice in the old American West at the turn of the 20th century. Raised on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and educated in Indian boarding schools, Bob sets out with his friend Brave Bear determined to carve out a life for himself on the edge of the Dakota frontier. When Bob borrows money from his father to start his own herd of cattle, a merciless winter storm wipes out his investment, forcing him and Brave Bear to take jobs with the Montana stockman’s association as enforcers, hunting down rustlers stealing livestock. As their journey continues, they hide out with the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, spend time in Deadwood, ride with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and drive cattle from Fort Yates to Thunder Hawk. Things take a far more serious turn, however, and Bob is arrested for murder after a drunken argument turns deadly. Only his extraordinary will and the relentless efforts of his family will be able to save Bob—but will they be able to do so in time? An enthralling, captivating true story, Along the Trail to Thunder Hawk is the kind of tale that needs to be told: the real-life struggles of a true American family, bridging cultural divides through some of the most colorful times and locations in the nation’s history. Capturing the point-of-view and dialect of Bob with uncanny accuracy as he grows from a boy to a man, this authentic groundbreaking novel puts into focus a nation in transition while demonstrating how the cultural divide at the turn of the past century was really no different than those same cultural and racial issues being struggled with in the 21st century. Gripping from the prologue to the epilogue, Along the Trail to Thunder Hawk is a must-read for anyone interested in the formation of a nation and the hardships true American families endured to make it happen.

George Gilland grew up on ranches in the "West River Country," and he has been involved in ranching and farming for most of his life. He has raised prize-winning cattle on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation for more than 30 years. He is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and has served as president of the Lakota Ranchers Association and treasurer of the American Indian Livestock Association. He was raised on ranches located in many of the places described in Along the Trail to Thunder Hawk. Mr. Gilland has won several grand championship trophies for breeding Red Galloway and Blonde d'Aquitaine cattle, and for hard riding in Team Penning in area contests. He graduated from Lemmon, South Dakota, High School and served in the US Army from 1964 to 1966. George Gilland currently writes a column for the Dakota Herald, based on his life and reminisces as a rancher. He speaks Lakota, which he learned from his father and uncles. He has traveled throughout the United States and Western Europe. As a child Sharon Daggett Rasmussen listened entranced to the stories her mother told about life on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Her family farmed what had been her grandmother's original Indian homestead and she attended the same schools as her mother and grandmother. Although her family moved to Oregon, they kept up connections with Standing Rock family and the land. She gathered those stories, along with a trunk full of family photos, for the day when she could fulfill her promise to her mother to "tell our story" - the story of blended white and Lakota families on America's last frontier. Ms. Rasmussen has worked as a technical writer, editor, and publications manager for more than 30 years for a variety of government agencies and nonprofits in the Washington, DC area. She is President of Polestar Consulting, LLC, providing editorial and research services. She has traveled widely in the United States, Europe, and Africa. Ms. Rasmussen holds a B.A., cum laude, from Wesleyan University in American Studies and an M. Ed. from George Mason University. Mr. Gilland and Ms. Rasmussen, who are cousins, began collaborating on this book in 2006 by exchanging chapters and ideas by email, "snail" mail, and phone despite fading cell phone reception, sometimes balking computers, and life's emergencies and contingencies. "We realized that between the two of us, we could tell the whole story that became Along the Trail to Thunder Hawk," said Mr. Gilland.