Wild Whistling Blackbirds

"Wild Whistling Blackbirds" is the second book in the Whitlock Family Saga, following "River of Light and Shadow." The tumultuous decade of the 1860s finds the Whitlock family settled in rural Iowa, but scattered by the winds of change across the divided United States. David, the patriarch, struggles to survive the savagery of the Civil War, while his son Johnny becomes embroiled in the Paiute War on the western edge of the vast Utah territory where he is keeper of a Pony Express station. The Whitlock's only daughter, Elizabeth, campaigns for suffrage in mid-century Chicago, leaving Suzanna alone in the bucolic Iowa village of Afton to manage the family's lumber mill. When reports of her husband's death place the future of the mill at risk, she becomes a woman fighting for position and recognition in a man's world while she battles prejudice, loneliness, and greed to keep the Whitlock estate intact until she can again bring her family together.