Abstract:
Two men separated by war join together in the last redoubt of the frontier in Texas in 1868, the high escarpment of the Panhandle, one to rear his infant daughter, the other to keep her alive. They are caught up in the Panhandle’s violent transition from uninhabited plains grazed by thousands of buffalo and traversed by Comanche and Kiowa to ranches peopled by iron willed plainsmen and lonely cowboys. The child rides with her father and the gunman across unfenced prairies and into unmapped canyons. She learns that love is a strange and inexplicable phenomenon which creates and destroys at whim. She watches her father and his partner invest each day of their lives creating the great Escadara ranch. She becomes Katharane Diane Stuart, mistress of the Escadara.