Synopsis
He walked home from Virginia with a dead man’s knapsack and nothing else.
Texas, 1865. Jacob Turner returns from four years of war to find his farm occupied by Sarah Briggs, a widow with two young sons, who has nowhere else to go. Before he can reclaim his land, a sharp-suited speculator files an abandonment claim, and Jacob has five days to contest it, or lose everything he walked eleven hundred miles to reach.
The knapsack on his shoulder belonged to Eli Briggs, Sarah’s husband. A man Jacob knew at Petersburg. A man he watched die.
Set in the raw months of Reconstruction, when land titles, loyalty, and identity were all contested ground, The Knapsack Road is a story about grief, honor, and the question of what a man owes the dead. Jacob must choose between the land that kept him walking for a thousand miles and the people who now make it worth keeping, while Tuwihtua, a young Comanche warrior, traces his own reckoning with a frontier that is shrinking beneath his feet.
Spare, morally precise, and deeply human, this novel asks who truly owns a place, and whether belonging is something you claim or something you earn.
For readers of Paulette Jiles, Larry McMurtry, and Ron Rash.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
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The Knapsack Road, Seven Stories of Reconstruction Texas (Hardcover)
Print on DemandSeller: Grand Eagle Retail, Bensenville, IL, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. THE KNAPSACK ROAD is a collection of seven interlocking short stories set in the limestone and cedar country of central Texas during and immediately after the Civil War. The stories share characters, locations, and a single road, building a composite portrait of a specific American moment: the season when the old order had ended and no one yet knew what would replace it.The collection opens with Jacob Turner's return to his Hill Country farm after four years in the Confederate Army, a return that is not the homecoming he had imagined - his wife and children died before he left, and strangers have settled in his house. The decision Jacob makes in that first encounter ripples through every story that follows.Sarah, a fifteen-year-old working girl whose father steals her wages, appears first as a presence in Jacob's kitchen and then in her own story - a young woman beginning, very carefully, to understand the difference between endurance and choice. Eli Briggs signed the company roll beside Jacob that same afternoon, and his story, told through the journal he kept, is what men carry when they march away from things they cannot say out loud. Harlan Vance never enlisted; he made a list of forty-seven properties with his father's handwriting and spent the war filing deeds, and his arrival at the Turner farm is the collection's most direct examination of how power moves through paper.Moses walks out of the quarters on the day of emancipation with an iron strap in his pocket, his wife's hand in his, and a name - a Bureau office, a Quaker, a man who writes things down. His story is the collection's moral center. Tuwihtua, a young Comanche learning from his uncle to read an arrow shaft against the sky, finds himself on a ridge above the Hill Country as the world his people have known contracts around them - and his brief encounter with Jacob Turner, a moment of recognition across an impassable distance, is one of the collection's most carefully crafted scenes. In post-Civil War Texas, the lives of a veteran, a freedman, a Comanche, and others intersect. Their choices will define a new world rising from the ashes of the old. A powerful portrait of an American turning point. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9798993464268
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THE KNAPSACK ROAD: SEVEN STORIES OF RECONSTRUCTION TEXAS
Seller: California Books, Miami, FL, U.S.A.
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The Knapsack Road, Seven Stories of Reconstruction Texas
Seller: PBShop.store UK, Fairford, GLOS, United Kingdom
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HRD. Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # L2-9798993464268
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The Knapsack Road, Seven Stories of Reconstruction Texas (Hardcover)
Print on DemandSeller: AussieBookSeller, Truganina, VIC, Australia
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. THE KNAPSACK ROAD is a collection of seven interlocking short stories set in the limestone and cedar country of central Texas during and immediately after the Civil War. The stories share characters, locations, and a single road, building a composite portrait of a specific American moment: the season when the old order had ended and no one yet knew what would replace it.The collection opens with Jacob Turner's return to his Hill Country farm after four years in the Confederate Army, a return that is not the homecoming he had imagined - his wife and children died before he left, and strangers have settled in his house. The decision Jacob makes in that first encounter ripples through every story that follows.Sarah, a fifteen-year-old working girl whose father steals her wages, appears first as a presence in Jacob's kitchen and then in her own story - a young woman beginning, very carefully, to understand the difference between endurance and choice. Eli Briggs signed the company roll beside Jacob that same afternoon, and his story, told through the journal he kept, is what men carry when they march away from things they cannot say out loud. Harlan Vance never enlisted; he made a list of forty-seven properties with his father's handwriting and spent the war filing deeds, and his arrival at the Turner farm is the collection's most direct examination of how power moves through paper.Moses walks out of the quarters on the day of emancipation with an iron strap in his pocket, his wife's hand in his, and a name - a Bureau office, a Quaker, a man who writes things down. His story is the collection's moral center. Tuwihtua, a young Comanche learning from his uncle to read an arrow shaft against the sky, finds himself on a ridge above the Hill Country as the world his people have known contracts around them - and his brief encounter with Jacob Turner, a moment of recognition across an impassable distance, is one of the collection's most carefully crafted scenes. In post-Civil War Texas, the lives of a veteran, a freedman, a Comanche, and others intersect. Their choices will define a new world rising from the ashes of the old. A powerful portrait of an American turning point. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9798993464268
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The Knapsack Road, Seven Stories of Reconstruction Texas (Hardcover)
Print on DemandSeller: CitiRetail, Stevenage, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. THE KNAPSACK ROAD is a collection of seven interlocking short stories set in the limestone and cedar country of central Texas during and immediately after the Civil War. The stories share characters, locations, and a single road, building a composite portrait of a specific American moment: the season when the old order had ended and no one yet knew what would replace it.The collection opens with Jacob Turner's return to his Hill Country farm after four years in the Confederate Army, a return that is not the homecoming he had imagined - his wife and children died before he left, and strangers have settled in his house. The decision Jacob makes in that first encounter ripples through every story that follows.Sarah, a fifteen-year-old working girl whose father steals her wages, appears first as a presence in Jacob's kitchen and then in her own story - a young woman beginning, very carefully, to understand the difference between endurance and choice. Eli Briggs signed the company roll beside Jacob that same afternoon, and his story, told through the journal he kept, is what men carry when they march away from things they cannot say out loud. Harlan Vance never enlisted; he made a list of forty-seven properties with his father's handwriting and spent the war filing deeds, and his arrival at the Turner farm is the collection's most direct examination of how power moves through paper.Moses walks out of the quarters on the day of emancipation with an iron strap in his pocket, his wife's hand in his, and a name - a Bureau office, a Quaker, a man who writes things down. His story is the collection's moral center. Tuwihtua, a young Comanche learning from his uncle to read an arrow shaft against the sky, finds himself on a ridge above the Hill Country as the world his people have known contracts around them - and his brief encounter with Jacob Turner, a moment of recognition across an impassable distance, is one of the collection's most carefully crafted scenes. In post-Civil War Texas, the lives of a veteran, a freedman, a Comanche, and others intersect. Their choices will define a new world rising from the ashes of the old. A powerful portrait of an American turning point. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9798993464268
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THE KNAPSACK ROAD, SEVEN STORIES OF RECONSTRUCTION TEXAS
Print on DemandSeller: AHA-BUCH GmbH, Einbeck, Germany
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Buch. Condition: Neu. nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - THE KNAPSACK ROAD is a collection of seven interlocking short stories set in the limestone and cedar country of central Texas during and immediately after the Civil War. The stories share characters, locations, and a single road, building a composite portrait of a specific American moment: the season when the old order had ended and no one yet knew what would replace it.The collection opens with Jacob Turner's return to his Hill Country farm after four years in the Confederate Army, a return that is not the homecoming he had imagined - his wife and children died before he left, and strangers have settled in his house. The decision Jacob makes in that first encounter ripples through every story that follows.Sarah, a fifteen-year-old working girl whose father steals her wages, appears first as a presence in Jacob's kitchen and then in her own story - a young woman beginning, very carefully, to understand the difference between endurance and choice. Eli Briggs signed the company roll beside Jacob that same afternoon, and his story, told through the journal he kept, is what men carry when they march away from things they cannot say out loud. Harlan Vance never enlisted; he made a list of forty-seven properties with his father's handwriting and spent the war filing deeds, and his arrival at the Turner farm is the collection's most direct examination of how power moves through paper.Moses walks out of the quarters on the day of emancipation with an iron strap in his pocket, his wife's hand in his, and a name - a Bureau office, a Quaker, a man who writes things down. His story is the collection's moral center. Tuwihtua, a young Comanche learning from his uncle to read an arrow shaft against the sky, finds himself on a ridge above the Hill Country as the world his people have known contracts around them - and his brief encounter with Jacob Turner, a moment of recognition across an impassable distance, is one of the collection's most carefully crafted scenes. Seller Inventory # 9798993464268