The Crossing (Blood of the Crossing)

Some journeys begin with a dream. Rhys ap Hywel's begins with a lock.

Wales, 1608. When Rhys is driven from his family's cottage and stripped of the land and flock that sustained them, Virginia offers one last hope-a new beginning across the sea.

Margaret "Meg" Hughes is a widow determined that no man will decide her future-or Elin's. On the dangerous voyage to Jamestown, her path collides with Rhys's. Bound first by necessity and then by a fierce partnership, they set out to build a home on the contested banks of the James River.

But in a colony ruled by hunger, debt, and fragile claims, every acre carries a price. As colonial expansion collides with Indigenous lives, a name written in a ledger can mean the difference between belonging and disappearance. And with the reckoning of 1622 drawing near, everything Rhys and Meg have fought to build may be swept away.

The Crossing is Book One of Blood of the Crossing-a sweeping historical saga of loss, courage, love, survival, and the price of claiming a life of your own.

Steven Phillips is an Oklahoma-based author, U.S. Marine Corps veteran, and business owner with a passion for history and storytelling. His writing blends historical detail, adventure, romance, and deeply human characters facing impossible choices. He is the author of The Crossing, the first novel in the Blood of the Crossing saga-a sweeping story of survival, loyalty, and love set against the dangers of the seventeenth-century Atlantic world.