A Coming of Age

This is a tale of friendship and survival, of romance and lost love, despair and courage. You visit a city that was itself just coming of age. You will experience the War Between the States at the border between Missouri and Kansas as experienced from a woman's point of view. Alana Stewart is frightened and destitute when her friend Charity Benten sneaks her into the military-occupied City of Kansas on a hot summer afternoon in 1864. Her husband is missing in action, her wealthy St. Louis family has disowned her and her homestead has been ravaged by Union troops. Alana is trapped; she cannot re-marry though she is strongly attracted to Charity's older brother. As a respectable woman she cannot work.Alana's husband returns but is changed beyond recognition, but she nearly loses her life, when in one his many rages, he locks his very pregnant wife in their rooms and leaves her. Alana's future now consists of providing for her darling daughter. Meanwhile Charity marries and begins to focus on the emerging society scene in the city, not on the two women's friendship. Alana's poverty and questionable existence do not meet her husband's traditional attitudes and they drift apart. Alana becomes a well-respected dressmaker and designer.
Coming of Age brings to life not only rich, courageous characters bent on social and cultural survival during one of the mast tumultuous and dynamic periods in American growth. History comes alive with rich and compelling characters.