Cut Hand

Far from the world he knows, he’ll find a home. Among strangers, he’ll find acceptance. And in the arms of an unexpected man, he’ll find love. Young Billy Strobaw comes West to escape the stigma of his Tory family. In the Dakota Territories, he encounters the Yanube warrior Cut Hand. Billy’s attraction to the other man is as surprising as the Yanube perspective on same-sex love. Unlike Europeans, the Siouan tribe celebrates such unions. Billy and Cut Hand can live as partners and build a life together, which Billy agrees to do. As Billy struggles to acclimate to a very different culture, quickly discovering the Yanube have as much to teach him as he has to impart to them, a larger struggle is brewing. The white man is barreling through the Great Plains, trampling underfoot anyone who stands in his way. As a leader of his people, Cut Hand must decide whether it will be peace or war. In a historical romance taking place against the epic backdrop of the early American West, where a single spark can ignite a powder keg of greed, lust for power, and misunderstanding, one man must find his place in history and his role in the preservation of all he has come to value.

The true story of Richens Lacy "Cut-Hand" Wootton, mountain man, pioneer, explorer, and trader who helped open the American West. Dick Wootton was "two hundred pounds of hard muscle with a wild shock of bristling hair to match" when in 1836 he set out from Kentucky for the far west. He lived to become one of the greatest of all those who helped tame a savage and unknown land. In childhood when playing with an axe, Dick lost two fingers and was always called "Cut-Hand" by the Native Americans. They knew him as a white man whose word to them was never broken. As a trapper, explorer, buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, and scout, he lived enough adventures for a dozen ordinary men. But he went on to drive a flock of 9,000 sheep over 1,600 miles of desert and mountains to the California gold fields, outwitting Native Americans and bandits on the way, and made a fortune from the venture. With the Colorado gold strike, Dick opened the first store and hotel in Denver, then founded the town of Pueblo. His last great exploit was to blast open the 50-mile Raton Pass between New Mexico and Colorado to establish the first toll road in the west. He lived there until his death in 1893, watching a growing nation surge westward over the trails he had carved out from the wilderness.

Billy Strobaw's world turns on its axis when he has a suprising and intense physical reaction to a young Indian he and two of his travelling companions have taken captive. The handsome warrior, Cut Hand, eventually not only earns his freedom but also steals Billy's heart and prevails upon the American to come live among his people. Plunged into a strange culture where lust for another man is not regarded as disgraceful, Billy agrees to become Cut's 'winkte' wife and comes to understand that the Native Americans have just as much to offer him as he has to share with them.

"Offers a variety of exercises that will help your child practice scissor skills and other readiness basics, such as story order, counting, matching, and beginning sounds. The interesting activities with clear directions will provide hours of educational fun for your child"--Page 4 of cover

'I Cut My Finger' is Stuart Ross's first full-length poetry collection since his acclaimed 'Hey, Crumbling Balcony! Poems New & Selected' (2003). The poems here show Ross's ever-expanding breadth, from his trademark humour and surrealism, to pointedly experimental works and poems of human anguish. Here, a poet includes a letter threatening suicide in his submission of poems to a literary journal; a businessman dons flippers to swim along the sidewalk to his downtown office; the U.S. military follows a trail of red ants to glacial redemption; the writer finds profound joy in a tower of canned niblets. But beneath the slapstick exterior of so many of Ross's poems there lurk dark threats and darker pleasures."Many of his narrative poems can best be called surreal. With their fancifully imaginative stories and wonderfully absurdist takes on the world, it's as if you're watching bizarre cartoons on YouTube." - Prairie Fire"A damn-fine book in every sense of the word." - Taddle Creek