Granger’s Crossing
The 1780 war service of Continental lieutenant Ulysses Granger proves costly—his sergeant and childhood best friend Ham is killed while on a mission of mercy in the local Spanish-held community. All baffling signs point to murder, not death in battle. Granger is seduced and falls hard for a gunsmith’s French wife before he is called away to pursue British and Native American forces.
At war’s end Granger returns as a civilian merchant to St. Louis and resumes his investigation, seeking justice for Ham’s family. He continues to pursue the lovely now-widow, too. It will take all his courage and Connecticut Yankee ingenuity to uncover a plot rife with buried treasure, duplicity and contradictions.
Well-drawn characters of the 18th-century milieu of Native American, Spanish, free and enslaved African Americans, French and immigrant New Englanders and fast-paced action sequences make up for somewhat slow plot development and a middle that might have been more tightly edited. Granger’s emotional development is a refreshing bonus amid the action-adventure. A welcome addition to historical novels of the early Federal period.