James Vesely

Coon Creek: a Novel of the Mississippi River Bottoms James Vesely

The Mississippi Valley in western Illinois thirty years after the Civil War. Japheth Bunt, a veteran of that war, is a man who lives to hunt and drink at the expense of honest work. No ones ideal of a husband or a father. Hannah Bunt, of pioneer stock, is the strong-willed woman who fell in love with him years before, and content with her hard, but simple life on Coon Creek. Elias Bunt their son. An adventurous boy who watches in fear as his life and the lives of those he loves are threatened by a bitter family feud that rages in the woods and on the roads of Hancock County, Illinois. And, as the 19th century rolls into the 20th, a grown Elias is torn between his love for two women, and his misplaced loyalty to the notorious outlaw, Charlie Birger as the Bunts are caught up in a struggle to survive the violence and bootleg whiskey war that sweeps across the Mississippi River Valley. A story filled with drama and turmoil, love and hate, heartbreak and humor with a cast of unforgettable characters as vivid and colorfully drawn as the turbulent times that produced them.