Just Call Me Buck
A patchwork of small homesteads
In 1868, Wilsonville was a farming community located east of a tributary of the Greater Miami River in Western Ohio. The folks there worked long hours to produce enough food for their families.
This is the story of one young man's perilous journey into adulthood, a life that takes him halfway around the world, and back again.
Forced to become a man before his time
Buck lived in a time when a few rugged men still lived by their own set of rules, governed not by Eastern laws but by their savage surroundings.
Death was their constant companion. Their end could come at any moment, caused by the slightest mistake, or hesitation to act.
A young man, before his time
In 1868, Wilsonville was a farming community east of a tributary of the Greater Miami River, in Western Ohio.
Most of the surrounding countryside was nothing more than a patchwork of small homesteads; the folks there worked long hours to produce enough food for their families. This is the story of one young man's perilous journey into adulthood.
His life takes him halfway around the world and back. Buck is forced to become a man before his time. He lived in a time when a few rugged men still lived by their own set of rules, governed not by Eastern laws but by their savage surroundings.
Death was their constant companion. Their end could come at any moment, caused by the slightest mistake, or hesitation to act.
Read the opening pages
Ashes to Ashes
As Willie slowly walked down the dark road to town, his thoughts drifted back to a better time. One filled with the warmth of his mom and dad sitting around the supper table with him. He could almost smell the hot apple pies or blackberry cobblers his mother often baked for dessert.
No matter how exhausted his father was from working the land, he always smiled around Willie and his mother. It did not matter whether he had spent the day plowing the back forty, or clearing brush from yet another overgrown section of their two-hundred acres; his father always tried to keep the family's spirit up. Willie was proud to be William Adam Miller Jr.
Willie's cot was in the half loft over the main room, which served as both kitchen and living room. The house had little by way of furniture. As was the case with most of the local farmers, Willie's father had made all the pieces. The exception being Willie's mother's most prized possession; the old rocking chair that had once been her mother's.