Kimball has created and set in motion a large cast of fully realized and individualized characters, each created with economy and wisdom. The African-American cast of characters include The African, a woman who successfully, miraculously somehow (Kimball doesn't tell us how) flees Mississippi with her five children and makes it finally out to the southwest corner of Kansas; Spartacus, Sojourner's husband, who is separated from his wife and family and who spends thirty years searching for them before being united first with his daughter and at last with his wife back in Mississippi; Little Sojourner, known by many other names such as Coyote because she was raised by coyotes and acts and reacts like them but who becomes an expert horse wrangler. Other Africans include Hortense S., who has settled in Nicodemus; Cannonball, who has become Secundo, the secondin-command and then the man in charge of a trail...