PROTAGONIST BIOS

Character Bio of Jessamine Gallagher up to age 20

      Jessamine was born in 1856 to German Sarah Braun and Irish Charles Gallagher in the Minnesota River Valley near New Ulm.  Her maternal grandparents, Herman and Della Braun live in a predominately German county nearby.  In August, 1862, the Minnesota Sioux Uprising changes her life forever and colors her prejudicial view of Indians when her grandparents are killed. The family moves to rural Rochester, Minnesota until Nebraska Territory is opened to settlement six years later. 

     Coming of age on a Nebraska farm, red-haired, brown-eyed Jessamine at 17 is slim, taller than most girls, and disdainful of anything feminine.  To prove the point, she favors wearing britches and boots and trains her red mare to out-race any of the local steeds.  She wins top honors in the 1874 Arapaho graduation class, but her dreams of training horses or continuing her education are shattered after the Grasshopper Plaque of 1874 leaves the family destitute.

     After the tragic death of her parents, she assumes the role of head of the family and disguised as a boy, drives her younger sister and brother overland with muleskinners bound for Ft. Laramie, hoping to join their only living relatives there.  The hazardous journey is completed only with the help of a half-breed guide who sees through her disguise, and has an agenda of his own. 

     She finds her own headstrong judgments and desires begin to change as she is faced with harsh realities and the hypocrisies of the shrinking frontier and military life.  At age 20, the tomboy has evolved into a woman of thoughtful self-discovery.  

Character Bio of Keya Mitchell, up to age 32 

     Green-eyed Keya was born in 1843 to a Brule Indian mother and a white soldier. He is raised as an Indian by his mother and grandfather, Spotted Eagle, sharing a happy and carefree childhood with his cousin, Curly (later to become Crazy Horse.)
     At Ash Hollow in Nebraska Territory, his mother is killed in an 1855 massacre by soldiers and he is subsequently sent to an orphanage in St. Louis.  As the protégé of a kind nun and the army general who had mercy on him, he is schooled in his father's world until his release at age 18, tall, handsome, and educated as well as any white boy.

     He feels he no longer "belongs" to either race, but cannot deny his allegiance to his grandfather's Lakota people. He alternates between life in both worlds for the next 12 years, finally learning his father's identity. As an expert horseman, fluent in each of his parent's tongues, he is often employed as a wrangler, guide or messenger. 

     His life and choices become more complicated when he meets and matches wits with a sarcastic, strong-willed Irish girl disguised as a boy. Their romance is  plagued with cultural and racial conflicts and misunderstandings.  In 1876, he is finally drawn into the most famous battle of the Indian Wars of the 19^th Century, a battle that changes his world, and that of the free-roaming Indian…forever.