In 1864, a woman named Nettie Johnson stood up in an Oregon courtroom and, after years of lying to survive, told the truth.  It hanged the man she loved and burned her world to the ground. She got up the next morning anyway.

Willow Creek is a work of literary historical fiction set on the Oregon frontier during the Civil War years, drawn from court records, census documents, and newspaper archives of a true 1864 murder trial. Nettie Johnson is real. So is the plural marriage no one confirmed aloud, the mixed-race child recorded on an index card as "1/2 Indian," and the jury that took less than an hour to convict a man who repeatedly denied murdering his fellow travelers, placing the blame on two strangers.

Told in four voices — Nettie herself; Henry Deadmond, narrating from beyond the hanging; Colonel N.H. Gates, the defense attorney keeping a journal he never expected to matter; and Captain Hudson, a disgraced Union officer trying to find his footing in a territory still deciding what kind of country it meant to be — Willow Creek reconstructs an injustice the historical record documented but never explained.

The historical record tells us what happened at Willow Creek. This novel asks why.

Status: Currently seeking representation.