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Manifest Destiny didn't just ride in on horseback. It came with lawyers.

In 1887, the U.S. Supreme Court sealed one of the largest land frauds in American history: the Maxwell Land Grant, nearly 1.7 million acres of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Congress, federal land officials, and the courts worked in tandem to hand it to a corporation. The Jicarilla Apache and Ute lost their ancestral homeland. Hispano families who had farmed the land for generations saw their homes declared illegal squats because they held handshake agreements instead of English deeds. Anglo homesteaders who came west expecting to claim public land were evicted by company lawyers. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo promised to protect these families. Corporate property law won instead.

Land Shadows tells this story through shifting first-person voices. Murdoch's story runs from age nine into adulthood. Kawanee is a character inspired by my great-grandmother. At its center is a question I couldn't let go of: what happens when people driven off their own land become the ones doing the driving?

I grew up between Albuquerque and Taos, and I'm a descendant of Archange Ouilmette, the Potawatomi woman Wilmette, Illinois is named for. This book began in Cimarron, when I kept noticing Scottish surnames on the old ranches and wondered how Highlanders came to own New Mexico. The answer ran from the Highland Clearances straight through the American West.

If Killers of the Flower Moon stayed with you, this one will too.

Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye Winner · Maxy Award Winner for Historical Fiction

When you buy here, the whole sale comes straight to me, not a retailer. Thank you for reading independent.

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Land Shadows by R.J. Striegel

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