"ABSORBING...[A] FAST-MOVING PIECE OF FICTION." --South Bend Tribune On the day before his wedding, Gypsy Smith, a mixed-blood black-Cherokee gunfighter and lawman, is brutally attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, mutilated, and left for dead. Now he's out for blood. Schoolteacher John Maxwell believes that Indians must disavow their heritage and conform to the ways of the white man in order to survive. Then his daughter, Rachel, falls in love with Corby, a Cheyenne boy--forcing Maxwell to confront his convictions in the shadow of their doomed passion. Set during the Oklahoma land rush of the 1880s-- "the damnedest race in history"--CHILDREN OF THE DUST tells the interlocking stories of dispossessed Indians and newly freed blacks as never before. Bold, grand, and timelessly entertaining, this is a novel about an American past that we rarely explore and dare not forget. "Gypsy Smith is the archetypal Clint Eastwood hero, except that his heritage is black and Cherokee....[Carlile] leads us down the unfamiliar back roads of his territory." --The New York Times Book Review "An authentic and historically accurate depiction of what was perhaps the most tumultuous and colorful period and place in the history of the Western frontier." --Black Media News