The Eastbound trilogy sweeps across the landscape of two continents during the last two decades of the Victorian era. It is the stirring saga of desperate escape by a brave heroine from violence, murder, and a deadly vendetta. 

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In book one, Western Apprehension, it is the 1880s in America’s Wild West. The story revolves around the fate of a retiring US Marshal who faces one last deadly encounter. Maggie Schmitz is later introduced as the mistreated wife of an abusive frontier lawyer, Fred Winkelman. Fred plays a peripheral role as a scoundrel and nuisance to the Marshal and the Marshal’s love interest. Fred, Maggie, and their three young children live in the small rural town of Millbrook in the New Mexico Territory. Courageously, she decides to flee with her children to live with her parents in Kansas City.

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Book two, Quest for Safe Haven, chronicles her desperate struggle to free herself from her vengeful spouse’s grip. Her ultimate flight to Chicago provides the stage entrance for Frank Hollister, a police detective, who quickly becomes enamored by her natural charm. He immediately takes a personal and ultimately an active interest in her plight. A fatal dramatic event causes them to go their separate ways.

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In book three, Sojourns, around a decade later, Maggie embarks on a foreign venture as a governess to start anew and free herself from her grief-stricken existence. The same route is also taken by Frank Hollister to resolve his brooding soul and broken spirit. As expatriates, serendipity brings them together to allow them to resolve their severed relationship. Together, they struggle to overcome the new challenges that are hurled at them far from their American Midwest home.

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The Eastbound trilogy is an exciting undertaking by tracing a saga eastward starting from the late 19th century American southwest, to the Gilded Age Midwest, to the steel town of Pittsburgh, to the verdant hills in central Victorian England. It is an interesting approach to the traditional westward migration that characterizes American history and folklore.

 

That doesn’t mean that Truncate is standalone. It has become the prequel introduction to Frank Hollister, Timothy Brompton’s bodyguard in Truncate. Frank will reappear in Quest for Safe Haven and Sojourned.