The Books
Narrative-driven frontier history built from primary sources and the lived experience of the people who were there.
✦The Frontier Chronicles
Narrative-driven American frontier history—built from primary sources and the lived experience of the people who were there.
- •Firsthand accounts, letters, diaries, and newspapers
- •Who, what, and why it mattered—without academic fog
- •Start anywhere: each volume stands alone, but together they build a bigger story
The Frontier Chronicles
The Ghost Dance War
Hope, Fear, and the Road to Wounded Knee
A peaceful ceremony. A nation in fear. A tragedy born from misunderstanding.
In the winter of 1890, the Ghost Dance swept across the Plains. For the Lakota, it was a sacred prayer for renewal after decades of starvation, broken treaties, and the suppression of traditional life. To the United States government, it looked like the spark of an uprising.
The Ghost Dance War reveals how a spiritual movement rooted in hope was transformed into a national crisis—driven by fear, political pressure, and profound cultural ignorance.
"Clear, compelling, and meticulously researched. The Ghost Dance War offers a new understanding of one of America's most tragic and misinterpreted events. Ward McLendon blends eyewitness accounts, historical records, and cultural context to reveal the human stories behind the Ghost Dance movement and the escalating tensions that led to the Wounded Knee Massacre."
The Frontier Chronicles
Women on the Prairie
Stories of Grit, Survival, and Unbroken Spirit on the American Frontier
The American frontier was built on courage, sacrifice, and unbelievable resilience—and women were at the center of it all.
Women on the Prairie uncovers the powerful, often overlooked stories of the women who crossed plains, survived captivity, forged alliances, buried children, tended soldiers, negotiated with Native nations, and endured hardships that reshaped the American West. Their lives reveal a frontier far more complex—and far more human—than the one found in traditional histories.
From pioneer diarists to Native interpreters, from survivors of tragedy to quiet builders of community, these twelve women show the true breadth of frontier womanhood.
"Twelve magnificent women. Twelve magnificent stories. Rich in enlightening detail. McLendon has a gift for bringing these forgotten voices back to life."
✦Spirits Unbroken
A new series tracing the survival, resistance, and enduring sovereignty of Native American nations—from first contact through the long struggle to preserve identity, land, and culture.
- •Indigenous-centered scholarship and ethnohistory
- •Biographical portraits of twelve influential chiefs and leaders per volume
- •Written for general readers, designed for libraries, classrooms, and reading groups
Spirits Unbroken · Book 1
Echoes from the Eastern Shore
Twelve Native American Chiefs and the Fight for the Atlantic Homelands
From New England to the Chesapeake, Indigenous nations faced a world changing faster than any before it.
Rivers became borders. Treaties became traps. Diplomacy, once a means of survival, increasingly gave way to war, displacement, and erasure. Yet Native leaders did not simply react — they strategized, negotiated, resisted, and adapted, often with a political sophistication colonial observers failed to understand.
This book traces the lives and decisions of twelve influential chiefs and sachems, including leaders of the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Lenape, Powhatan, Haudenosaunee, and related nations. Set against the backdrop of first contact, trade rivalry, and colonial violence, Echoes from the Eastern Shore reveals how geography, power, and misunderstanding shaped the early American world — and how Native nations endured long after victory was declared against them.
"Vivid storytelling, and a compelling and accessible account of Indigenous leadership and resilience. A must-read for anyone interested in the full story of early America."
Published January 24, 2026 · 264 pages · Unbound Press Books