Texas Yankee: Homecoming (Paperback)

Texas Yankee: Homecoming is an adventurous love story set in Central Texas during the turbulent years following the Civil War. After fighting in the Yankee Cavalry, Joshua Granger returns to Texas to marry beautiful Sarah Lynn Smith in spite of the fact that one of her Confederate brothers has tried to kill him. Joshua and Sarah refuse to let anything stop them from becoming man and wife in this dramatic tale of triumph. A hopeful love letter from Sarah sets Joshua on an unusual journey from Kentucky to Texas in early 1866. With a couple of good horses and some big ideas he leaves the security of family and inheritance behind for the love of a strong woman on the Texas frontier. In Arkansas, Joshua takes on the responsibility of a mentally challenged orphan and is saddled with two wagons full of prostitutes who need a guide to Dallas. In the meantime Sarah is planning their wedding in spite of her mother's protests while she waits anxiously for Joshua's return. Upon arrival in Georgetown, Texas Joshua finds that he is unwelcome in the community and marrying Sarah is not the foregone conclusion he expected it to be. The next year is filled with the humor and hardship of homesteading a ranch, fighting Comanche and outlaws, breaking wild horses, catching and branding wild cattle, and hunting buffalo. In between the work, Joshua tries to fulfill the obligations of courtship as required by Sarah's family before they will bless her marriage to the Yankee. The gritty realism, the heartache, and the laughter that goes into making this frontier family brings Reconstruction Era Texas to life.