The Naturalists A Historical Novel of the Hayman Family

It all began with Abner Hayman, a man of the cloth. It was his intellect and drive that started the Hayman legacy. But there were periods in Abner’s life where he doubted his God, his wife, and his children. The man became torn in a land that demanded so much from him and his family.

His young son reached out to a calling, a spiritual feeling that he must move on to a land he could call his own. Along roads filled with pleasant and trying moments, John Hayman finally arrives at an area taken from the Indians and scorned by white men, a land of tall grass and marshes, teeming with life.

For several years John questions settling the open—at times harsh—prairie of the Nebraska territory. People streamed past his land along the Oregon Trail to a land place filled with magnificent trees and clear-running streams.

John would persevere, but only with the wisdom and help of Woman of the Grass. This life-saving encounter changed his view of the land. He learned to live with the grasses and marshes and a woman who he saves with the help of a cantankerous white man and his Pawnee wife. John settles into his first years—comfortable and undaunted.

Unknown challenges and changes lie ahead, some surmountable, others not so readily accepted or easily conquered. John Hayman would toil on the south-central Nebraska prairie filled with marshes, and the Hayman saga would continue with his youngest son.