Prologue: Oklahoma 1889 -- Georgia 1864 -- Chicago 1872 -- Phoenix 1881 -- Oklahoma 1891 -- Epilogue: California 1900.
Summary:
Traces decades in the lives of a post-Civil War Oklahoma family that includes such members as a psychopathic killer, a group of cruel brothers, an impassive ex-slave, a dangerous child prodigy and a pathologically deviant patriarch. After their actions during the Civil War lead to a courtmartial, a group of hardened Union soldiers recasts themselves as outlaws, and find that the disorder of Reconstruction allows for all sort of savage freedom. The psychopathic killer Quentin Ross; the mean and moronic Empire brothers; the impassive ex-slave Fred Johnson; dangerous child prodigy Lukas Shakespeare-- but the malevolent center of this 'family' is their cold, hardened leader, Augustus Winter, a man with an almost pathological resistance to the rules of society and a preternatural gift for butchery.
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