The year is 1842. At age fifteen, Shadow leaves his Dakota village near Fort Snelling to pursue a vision quest. His outward appearance causes others in his village to suspect he is a presage of evil, but his mother believes he is a gift from the spirit world. The young brave will become known as Shadow the Wolf Spirit.

At fourteen, Archibald Weed is already taller and stronger than any other fully grown man. He is also an albino. He confronts two slave catchers brutally whipping runaway slaves on the docks of Ellsworth, Maine, but it is Archie's own family who must ultimately flee when slave catchers are sent to capture his mulatto father.

At age fifteen, Anna is sold as a Fancy Girl at a New Orleans slave market, and taken to serve as a sex-slave on a paddlewheel steamer, the Mississippi Belle. The man who bought her, the Belle's captain, Phineas Morgan, has a change of heart, but before he can do anything to improve her prospects, the Belle explodes and burns to the waterline.

At sixteen, George Blackhorse lives a sedentary life with his Indian mother in Cairo, Illinois. His father is a black Indian, living and working in the northeast as a lawyer and abolitionist. One night, while fishing on the river in his canoe, George witnesses a paddlewheel steamboat explode and burn.

Five years later, in 1847, these four very different people serendipitously meet and begin a journey on the wild upper Mississippi River to a place they call Eden. They are seeking freedom, equality, and the opportunity to pursue their dreams. And for Shadow, it is home, a home he and his people will soon lose.

They all have one thing in common. They are all half-breeds.

I grew up in a rural town in central Ohio and have fond memories of working on the extended-family farms during the summer months of my youth. I had hoped to attend Ohio State University after high school, to study art, but we couldn't quite manage the costs, so I joined the Air Force. I served with the 3rd Air Rescue and Recovery Group in Viet Nam and then on to Thailand with the 40th Rescue and Recovery Squadron toward the end of that unpopular war. I left the military in 1974, and bumped around for several years as a kind of vagabond, doing all kinds of crazy jobs in several different places. I called that period of my life the pirate years.
I finally attended college at Florida Atlantic University and received my bachelor's degree in computer science. I worked in that industry for the next 24 years. The beginning of this period was when the Internet was being born, and I was lucky enough to have been involved in many of the historic efforts to create and evolve those technologies.
Along the way, my wife, Paula, and I built our beloved Hellanback Ranch in the back country of San Diego County. This was our little piece of paradise where we raised livestock, planted wine grapes, and started a winery. Ramona, the little town a few miles from the ranch, was a great place to live, and, over the years, we became very involved in the community, getting to know just about everybody. The time came, however, when ranching and winemaking were a bit overwhelming and we made the painful decision to sell the ranch. We relocated to New Port Richey on the west coast of Florida so that I could focus on writing.
I got the idea to start writing novels around 2014. I did a lot of professional writing dealing with management and technology during my career, but I always loved just telling stories. It was in my blood, as they say. I retired in 2016 and I've been writing ever since. I've published books in several different genres and have really enjoyed working on each one. The stories just keep pouring out of my head. I also love to cook, play the piano and sing, and I've composed several songs. Of course, I love to drink wine ? I was a winemaker. I'm still involved with winemakers back in California, and enjoy mentoring a few people who are just getting started in that industry.