Thy Brother’s Blood: A Louisiana Novel

Louisiana’s rich history weaves throughout the lives of the McKinzie brothers, Travis and Forrest. Their great-grandpa McKinzie left his Louisiana sugar cane plantation to fight and die in the War Between the States. When the war ended, reconstruction, taxes and floods whittled the three-thousand-acre family farm down to almost nothing.

After the mysterious drowning of their daddy and younger brother in the swamp, the two boys turn to their remaining father figures, Paw Paw and the Judge. Now, with the onset of economic depression, Travis and Forrest McKinzie struggle to maintain what’s left of their land and their culture as the industrialized world encroaches onto their agrarian roots.

Covering three generations of the McKinzie family, amidst conflict over civil rights, land usage and foreign wars that take the best of Southern blood, Travis and Forrest cling to their rich heritage as it is stripped from them.

The brothers are people of the land; people who love the land; people who understand the land. And in opposition to outside control and corruption, they are willing to give their lives to the protection of their families and the continuation of their Southern culture.