The Culling at Hollow Creek
A Novel of the 1840s

About this book:

In the mist-shrouded valleys of 1844 Pennsylvania, a veterinarian and a farmer's daughter uncover a contagion far deadlier than any cattle disease. When Constable Vance nails a quarantine order to the sycamore at the crossroads—backed by militia, magistrates, and a veterinary commissioner who hasn't touched a sick beast in two decades—Gideon knows the symptoms don't match the decree. The "murrain" striking Hollow Creek kills on one side of the lung while the other breathes clean. It kills by broadside and red wax seal. And it kills with a purpose: every condemned herd clears a deed for the Valley Land and Improvement Company.

Elspeth Penn has milked her father's Devons since she was tall enough to reach the teats. She knows which cow kicks, which holds her cud, which winter will break a mortgage payment. She also knows that Gideon—steady-handed, sharp-tongued, and the only man who's ever bested her at chess—is riding into a trap baited with law and gunpowder. As inspectors fan across the valley with orders to slaughter "infected" stock, and neighbors turn informant to save their own land, Gideon and Elspeth trace the rot to its source: a ledger in the magistrate's office, a surveyor's stakes in the meadow, and a truth buried deep in the soil.

Atmospheric, tense, and steeped in the grit of early American agriculture, *The Culling at Hollow Creek* is a historical thriller where the plague is a pretext, the law is a weapon, and two unlikely allies must outwit a conspiracy that wears the face of public health—before the spring thaw reveals nothing but ash and empty pastures.