ALL BUT ONE

A settler in Texas desperately tries to recover his children, who were abducted by Comanches, in this historical novel.

Mitchell Putman is no stranger to adventure or danger—he fought in the War of 1812, where he “honed Indian fightin’ skills, learnin’ fightin’ the way of these noble native people.” So it is unsurprising that he joins the many Americans who move to Mexican-controlled Texas during the 1820s, enticed by the offer of inexpensive land for sale. But there is a catch—the pioneers are drawn there to provide a defensive buffer between Mexicans and violent Native American tribes, and so the cheap land comes at the steep price of grave danger, perils thrillingly depicted by Landerman-Moore. After Putman moves there with his family, he quickly realizes just how volatile a world he’s entered. When tensions escalate into war, he joins a small army led by Sam Houston in 1836 to protect terribly vulnerable pioneers from the onslaught of the Mexican military as well as Native Americans, and he fights with valor in the decisive battle of San Jacinto. But later, vengeful Comanches kidnap five of his children and Matilda, the young daughter of his friend Andrew Lockhart. The author movingly chronicles Putman’s desperate search for his lost children, a grim but heroic quest. Similarly, Landerman-Moore deftly paints a bleak picture of the predicament many American pioneers found themselves in when their welcome was officially worn out. Putman reflects on precisely this when he witnesses the dispossessed firsthand: “Lookin’ up and down that ragged column I wondered how God would help us for it be a truth every Texian woman, man or child staggerin’ along were now sorrowful refugees, many near bein’ destitute, all near absent of hope. Despair is an awful thing to behold.” This is a rigorously researched and intensely gripping “family history novel.”

A historically meticulous and cinematically dramatic kidnapping tale.