“The Pantages - A Saga”

 A Novel by Harold Olov Wang

"THE PANTAGES, A Saga" is a gripping Epic-like and historically-based novel set in the mid 1800's, which brilliantly reflects the life and times of a family on the Western American frontier and their internal struggles, through vivid descriptive scenes, amazing adventures and encounters, and the interesting intricacies of the lives of its unusual but captivating characters.

The story begins during the settling of the West, and takes the reader through the history of three generations of a wealthy cattle baron and his family, exploring the relationships with their ranch hands, and the fascinating tapestry of events which keeps the lives of the two distinct classes forever interwoven. The drama unfolds when young Mathias Croom, a former "drover" for the Pantages family, is mustered out of the Union Army from his camp near Baton Rouge. Throughout his long and perilous journey up the Mississippi River, Croom is fraught with fears about his return and the uncertain fate that awaits him with Ben Pantages, the land baron who dislikes him heartily, but who holds Croom's future in his hands. As he nears closer to the eventual confrontations, Croom's apprehensions mount as he longs to be secretly reunited with the object of his undying passion and love, Etta, the land baron's daughter, who was just a mere slip of a girl when he had left for the War, far and away from the only place he ever called home on the raw plains of western Nebraska…..

Photo by Geraldine Livingston

"In the Central Plains states the grasses have a strange way, a movement when the wind blows even the least bit – a wuthering - that is almost hypnotic.

It, the movement of the grasses, can prove disastrous to the mind, can move it to disorders of mind and mood, to a melancholia that, descending in an instant, can change the course of lives. 

And so it was, time and again, with the Western settlers in this story. And that is what this story is all about – the 'wuthering' - of the grasses, and the resultant wuthering of people's souls."

-The Author