Land of the Buffalo Bones

This is another of the Dear American novels that has to do with the settling of America's west though this one is a little later in the process, occurring in 1873. It's also one of the few books written by a person who is a direct descendant of some of the people in the novel.

The story is about a group of people from a certain church in England that come to settle in the U.S. Their leader has talked brightly of the land and has some material from a railroad that also has bright promises for settlement and will help the people settle in the new area.

The promises of both, though, end up being rather empty. When the people arrive in the area they find that both the pastor of their church and the railroad has not given them adequate descriptions. They are in a nearly treeless area subject to bad winters, plagues of grasshoppers and Indians instead of a fully-laid out town awaiting them.

Things don't go well, of course, and the congregation at times turns on their pastor. There's a lot that happens in the story and most of it, frankly, is not very pleasant, but it's realistic. The story is well told and definitely worth reading.

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