Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book One

2022 National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist for Western Fiction
2021 International Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society Book Award Winner for Historical Fiction in Event/Era
2021 Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award Finalist for Prose
2021 Oklahoma Book Award Finalist for Fiction from the Oklahoma Center for the Book
2021 Spur Award Finalist for Historical Novel from the Western Writers of America
2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Historical Fiction (Pre-1900s)
2021 Will Rogers Medallion Award Finalist for Western Fiction 
2021 Peacemaker Award Finalist for Best First Novel
2020 Arkansas Gem from the Arkansas Center for the Book


Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves is an origin story in the true American tradition. Before Bass Reeves could stake his claim as the most successful nineteenth-century American lawman, arresting more outlaws than any other deputy during his thirty-two-year career as a deputy U.S. marshal in some of the most dangerous regions of the Wild West, he was a slave.

After a childhood picking cotton, Reeves became an expert marksman under his master's tutelage, winning shooting contests throughout the region. His skill had serious implications, however, as the Civil War broke out. Reeves was given to his master's mercurial, sadistic, Moby-Dick-quoting son in the hopes that Reeves would keep him safe in battle. The ensuing humiliation, love, heroics, war, mind games, and fear solidified Reeves's determination to gain his freedom and drew him one step further on his fated path to an illustrious career.

Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves is an important historical work that places Reeves in the pantheon of American heroes and a thrilling historical novel that narrates a great man's exploits amid the near-mythic world of the nineteenth-century frontier.

Sidney Thompson teaches creative writing and African American literature at Texas Christian University. His books include Sideshow: Stories (2006), You/Wee: Poems from a Father (2018), Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book One (2020), Hell on the Border: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book Two (2021), Kudzu's Enormous New Life (2022), and The Forsaken and the Dead: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book Three. Thompson is an award-winning author whose short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, such as The Carolina Quarterly, Cleaver Magazine, The Cortland Review, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, RHINO Poetry, Rkvry Literary Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology (Vol. VIII: Texas), The Southern Review, Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe: Anthology of Southern Writers​​​​ (Vol. 1 & 2), storySouth, and Waxwing Literary Journal.