Smoked Yankee: Black Soldiers At San Juan Hill.

The year is 1898, America is going to war with Spain, and it is the first time that black men can serve their country as free men for nothing more than love of country. This is the story of a man who goes to war to track down the man who killed his wife and son in a brutal rape and murder; he also goes to help elevate the black race in the eyes of white America. Further, he needs to escape an enticing young widow whom townsfolk say has killed off three "She just wore 'em out," they said of her. The setting is an all-black town in Kansas that has everything it needs to survive and grow. The town sees itself as a new Eden and seeks to entice black sharecroppers to abandon the Deep South, escape their dominating landowners, and take the Chisholm Trail to this African paradise in Kansas. The book sets the record straight about the famous charge on San Juan Hill. Among the dozen or more American regiments in Cuba were four regiments of black soldiers. The Indians of the Western plains called them Buffalo Soldiers. The Spanish infantry called them Smoked Yankees and said that it was of no use shooting at them because steel and powder will not stop them. This is a very human story that shows the transformation of our hero from a timid schoolteacher to a courageous Buffalo Soldier who brings justice where there is injustice. It heralds his love for a woman that overwhelms and overtakes him. It is a love that follows him to Cuba and back, and that endures for a lifetime.