Illinois! — Dana Fuller Ross

WAGONS WEST
Railroads and stockyards brought brawny bareheaded men to Chicago from the western prairies and the northern forests. Here waited the commerce that built empires, the painted women who lured farm boys, the gunman and the cardsharp who settled their arguments with a Colt .45. Here was the American dream of limitless opportunity... and an age-old nightmare of greed and danger.

ILLINOIS! To America's great cities came the visionary immigrant and the ambitious native; to Chicago came brave, broad-shouldered men willing to shovel, break, and build. Among them was famous roughrider Toby Holt--son of legendary wagon master Whip Holt--with a daring plan for a new dynasty. But even while he turned his strength to constructing the future, Holt's raucous past reshaped his life--as an old enemy and an old love brought upheaval and sudden death to this raw, blustery town. And on the fateful day of October 8, 1871, a new test of Toby Holt's courage would pit him against one of the nation's most awesome catastrophes... while on distant shores, Europe's bloody wars became another crucible of America's fate and a young officer's infidelity--as passions meet, ignite, and explode in ILLINOIS!