About This Book
In 1869 inside a dirty shack on the outskirts of Last Chance Georgia, Patience Levi screams at her mother and begs for defense against the man that stands, zipping up his trousers and laughing at her. Yet, somewhere deep inside of this child blooms the mettle to survive the life she's been born to. After hearing of her granddaughter's abuse, Patience's Grandmammy rescues her - to a virtual "servitude" to the prominent white people of the community. Then, the rough encounter with a black boy - bent on revenge against Patience - threatens her fragile new life. Patience becomes skilled with a knife in her effort to survive. She knows she must get away from Last Chance. Fortunately, or not, her Grandmammy decides Patience can only find real freedom in a new land, thus, Grandmammy gains Patience a place with a wagon train heading west. The wagon train labors across an Oklahoma prairie as winter sets in. On a cold windy day, the wagon loses a wheel. The small group struggles to make repairs when a miracle arrives in the guise of buffalo soldiers. But, the wagon train is attacked by Indians. The soldier's lie dead - the members of the wagon train, too - somehow Patience lives, given up for dead beneath a slain soldier. She grabs her only chance for survival, taking the clothes and the papers from the corpse that hid her - the buffalo soldier whose identity she will claim for many years to come and she and the only surviving horse take off across the prairie. She meets up with Calamity Jane, one of the fiercest women ever to ride across the west. Of course, Patience doesn't know this. She is unimpressed by Jane's bragging, but she is willing to be taught the ways of men by the raucous woman and to learn to shoot her newly acquired pistol, even kill with it if necessary. She believes she must be a man in order to be free. Patience learns a lot about herself and too much about Calamity. They part when Patience becomes Private Jeremiah Jones and heads to Fort Sumner to report. But Private Tigway Burrell knows this is not Jeremiah because Jeremiah was his friend. He becomes willing to put up with Patience's charade when he experiences her ferocious determination. Tigway, in his way, protects Patience and over time, Patience takes his kindness for love. Only Tigway wants his Army career and his freedom more than he wants Patience and he tells her this. Embarrassed and hurt, Patience takes Tigway's rejection like a good soldier and Tigway gets new orders and moves north leaving Patience to face years of uncertainty and loneliness. With no one to support her, she continues her charade as a soldier, until an ironic twist of fate finds her attempting to rescue a black man in the rugged mountains of Arizona. While trailing the men, Patience meets another woman, Tommy Jo Sanchez. Patience experiences not only a newfound friendship with Tommy Jo - one which will last a lifetime - but also a strange and fortuitous alliance with none-other-then Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the rest of the gang, as they all join to help rescue Tommy Jo's husband Henry. The unlikely group track the bandits into the city of Phoenix and, eventually, free Henry and return to Tombstone, where Tommy Jo and Henry live nearby at a ranch called Paradise. As the story unfolds for Patience and her friends, Patience finds herself in a crux - whether to give herself to Tombstone's blacksmith, Thaddeus Rutledge, who is smitten with her, or to remain the stalwart Patience, always responsible yet true to herself. Sometimes comical and sometimes sad, but always heartfelt, Patience struggles as she tries to find the balance between living her "pre-conceived" dream - of finally owning her own small piece of land and "being free" - or accepting a love and life beyond her dreams.
