Going Home

by Rain Trueax

When writing Going Home, I knew I was taking on some controversy when I had my hero fight for the South. I had researched that period and knew that the South wasn't all the same regarding slavery. Having a hero whose family owned a plantation but no slaves was not unheard of. 
 
The Hardmans had been leaders of a clan and landowners in Scotland. In the 1700s, the family's patriarch had seen the handwriting on the wall for what was coming in the conflict between the clans and England. He had sent his wife and children to France with what wealth he could put together. He stayed to fight out of honor even knowing it was a lost cause. 

There were many like that family who fought for their land and clan. Honor has people doing things like that. When the patriarch survived Culloden without being maimed or imprisoned, he found his way to France, and they all set sail for the New World where things would be different.  Don't forget Culloden was in 1746; so they weren't to know peace for long.

With the land they bought in Georgia had come slaves. The patriarch not only didn't believe in slavery but had suffered abuse himself. As soon as he could he set his slaves free and offered them work on the plantation. He taught his children and then grandchildren that freed people worked better when treated with respect and paid a fair wage.  

So back to Going Home, and why his family history explains the kind of man he is, why he would fight for a lost cause. It partly explains why he would leave the ranch he is trying to build up in Eastern Oregon, why he'd leave the woman he had hoped to make his wife. There is more involved.

Jed Hardman didn't go to fight to keep slavery, which he also didn't believe was right. He had seen enough of life to believe the South would not defeat the North. Although his family still owned that plantation in Georgia, he had his own land in Oregon. 

When his mother wrote of her need of him and that she was very sick, some might've claimed they just couldn't come. Learning two of his brothers were already fighting for the Confederacy, might not have been enough for a man without a strong sense of clan and honor.  Jed was that man with honor and loyalty-- another reason he didn't ask the woman he loved to wait for him, when he might not survive or even if he did could be maimed.

The book begins when the war is over. Raine, the oldest of the Stevens sisters has a nice life for herself in Portland. Jed returns with his only surviving brother to Oregon unsure if he'd have lost all he'd been building there. 

Oregon had declared itself a Northern state, which meant they didn't take kindly to those who had fought for the South. Oregon's government had done something that belied their sense of honor. No black man could own property in the state. Jed's brother was half black.

When I begin writing a book, I need to know the background for my characters, what makes them tick (much of what won't make it into the books). I often don't plan out all the secondary characters. Going Home ended up the most multicultural book I've written with Chinese, Jewish, Native American, on top of Jed's half brother. 

So, I was writing that book one summer having no idea that before I'd be bringing it out, my own country would again be arguing over the cause of a war fought between 1861-65, tearing down statues from the wrong side. This was a

bloody war that cost over 600,000 men their lives as it tore a nation apart with a bitterness that appears easily arisen even this many years later. 

When Jed returned to Oregon, he was hated for having fought for the South, but he faced even more turmoil as Eastern Oregon was thrust into another Indian war. The Snake War was one of Oregon's most violent. 

This following snippet has three men discussing the current and previous situation. Jed's father-in-law and friend are sitting on a porch in Eastern Oregon as night, cigars, and some whiskey has made them reflective.

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Excerpt from Going Home:

“Part of my crew are two Warm Springs,” Jed said as he watched the smoke rise. The moon had just come up and was casting an eerie glow on the other men’s faces. He supposed his also. “I wonder if they will feel safe to return.”

“They might not want to leave their people,” Phillips agreed. “The Snakes aren’t any friendlier to peace loving Indians than they are to whites. Right now they want to wipe any sign of us from their land.”

“Again,” Adam said, “I understand how they feel, but I’d have to kill them also to keep my own safe and protect my land. I wish there was a better way for men to resolve their differences.”

Phillips looked then at Jed, met his gaze. “Sometimes there isn’t and yet here we are, sipping a whiskey, smoking, when a year ago, Jed and I would have been trying to kill each other. Rather ironic, isn’t it.”

“You expect the Indian conflicts could end up the same way, Rand?” Jed asked with a touch of disbelief even if he wished it to be so.

“Once there is a clear victor.”

“You expect there will be,” Jed said laconically.

“Eventually. Hard feelings or not, this is a problem of land. It seems unlikely to be settled short of a lot of dying. I may not like it, but it’s how the world has always operated. The military tries to make peace but again and again it’s undermined by those who want control. What do you do about that?”

“Peace is found in a cemetery and sent there with a bullet,” Jed said with some bitterness. Two of his brothers had paid the ultimate price as they had tried to secure their land. Just because it had always been that way didn’t mean it should.

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Going Home is Book 3 in the Oregon Pioneer series following the Stevens Family. Book 1 had them on the Oregon Trail; Book 2 has them building homes and dealing with the Rogue River War and Oregon's own Trail of Tears;  and Book 4 brings the youngest Stevens sister to Eastern Oregon as a Pinkerton agent who meets up with her first love.

Available at Amazon for eBooks and paperbacks: Going Home.