Blood River Rising

 Blood River Rising is available through your Barnes and Noble or online at Barnes and Noble.com or Amazon.com. Want a signed copy for a gift? Contact the author directly through this website. 

A 2017 Chautauqua Institute Literary Finalist: One of five and the only one from a small, independent press.

"The KKK weren't never about race. It were always about power and greed."

So begins 86-year-old Hadley Thompson, who insists that I, a rural historian, research why two people were murdered. At first, I had little interest in the matter. Not only did the murders take place in 1924, there never was a question of who committed them. What difference could a motive make now? It is Thompson's insistence that an active Ku Klux Klan chapter fueled the feud between the blue-eyed Thompsons and their red-haired neighbors that helped changed my mind.

Soon we are an unlikely duo, tramping through field grass, combing through copies of dusty newspapers, and driving down gravel roads to discover what made friends and neighbors turn against each other in post World War I America. More than just a story of a feud, Blood River Rising whispers a warning for today's increasingly diverse society. Also available as an eBook and in Audio featuring William Lawson Culver narrating the part of Hadley Thompson.

Wilcox Bend, Miller County Missouri. Scene of two murders in 1924.