Synopsis of Novels by O.K. Williams

This is not a tutorial on playing poker, but a philosophy for life. It is a novel steeped in history. If I write of a battle, it happened, at the time and place I describe and the conclusion was real. I wrapped my characters in with historical figures of the era. If you see the name of a person, business, or place in bold type, that person, place or thing was real and where I say it was.

This is the story of JASON DUKE, a 17-year-old young man, that is a from a family of marksmen, joining the Confederate Army in the last year of the war, to avenge his brother that had raised him. His shooting talents are soon discovered, and he is transferred to the Regimental Sharpshooter Company. He is placed under Jedidiah Brown, a very experienced Sergeant Major who recognizes Jason’s talents and mentors him. Near the end of the war Jason is wounded in the leg at the Battle of Shy’s Hill, just south of Nashville Tennessee. He manages to evade capture, and limps his way to the Harpeth River, where he steals a small boat and floats down the river, hoping to reach Dickson County where he had family. While floating he gets into another gunfight at a railroad bridge, where he is again wounded, in the shoulder. Jason passes out.

When he awakes he is in a small cabin belonging to a beautiful Creole woman. Who a few years earlier had married an Arcadian man. They were both disowned by their families, so they had moved to Tennessee to begin building a plantation. They were in the first stages of that when the war broke out. The husband had joined the Confederate Army and has been gone for two years.

As she nurses Jason’s wounds he falls terminally in love with her. Marie was very attracted to him as well, but she loved her husband. They were able to maintain a respectable, but intense friendship. She recognizes that he has a very quick pragmatic mind for a young man with only a sixth-grade education. He instantly goes to the heart of problems. She convinces him he can far better utilize his intelligence were he to become better educated. Marie starts him on a lifetime of improving his education. When he comes across anything that interests him he becomes almost obsessed with learning more. Once introduced to this he begins to enjoy it. When Marie finds out that Jason had inherited a farm, she give him a book on business, telling him he needs to know those things because a farm is a business.