"Stubbornly independent and courageous to the extreme, [Sam Houston] could stand almost anything except boring routine" (Chapter 1, pg. 12.)

"Less than three months after his marriage, as he campaigned for reelection, Sam Houston's world fell apart. Eliza Allen Houston left him and went home to her family. Why this happened, why the marriage failed, will never be known with certainty" (Chapter 2, pg. 23.)

"[Sam Houston] came to Texas not as a revolutionary schemer but as a restless man seeking a new beginning, and he was not positive, even as he entered Texas, that his future lay in that direction" (Chapter 3, pg. 41.)

"Texas's vast expanses of open land had attracted thousands of Anglo settlers during the decade and a half before November 1835. Their future now depended on success on the battlefield, and it was Sam Houston's to win or lose, provided that somehow an army could be raised, unified, and convinced...