Michael Lindy | The Long Road from Shiloh
Michael Lindy

Silver Creek · Parker County, Texas

Michael
Lindy

Novels of the Texas frontier, written by two brothers who grew up on the land where the story happens.

Cover of The Long Road from Shiloh: A Mississippi Family on the Texas Frontier, by Michael Lindy. A log cabin and a big oak stand in silhouette against a sunrise, with a plowed field running toward the door.
The Minor Family Saga · Book One

Book One · 1865 to 1875

The Long Road from Shiloh

In June 1867, the Mississippi River runs eighteen feet above normal, and Charles Minor has nowhere to go but across it.

A Confederate captain captured by Union forces at the Battle of Shiloh, Charles Minor returned home after three years in a Union prison camp to face crushing reconstruction taxes and a Mississippi farm stripped bare. Facing an uncertain future in a land devastated by the war, he loaded his worldly goods into a prairie schooner and, with his wife and three children, began the difficult journey west toward a land claim on Silver Creek in Parker County, Texas, at the edge of the frontier.

Waiting for them was an unfinished cabin with rifle slots in the walls but no door. On moonlit nights Comanche raiders still crisscrossed the area stealing horses and killing settlers. Their nearest neighbors lived miles away, and the Minors would need every one of them.

The Long Road from Shiloh is a post-Civil War historical novel about a pioneer family homesteading on the Texas frontier west of Fort Worth. The setting is the farm they settled along Silver Creek in Parker County, the very land where the authors grew up. The book is the beginning of the Minor family saga.

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Series
The Minor Family Saga, Book One
Genre
Historical fiction, frontier family saga
Setting
Mississippi and Silver Creek, Parker County, Texas
Years
1865 to 1875
Available
Coming soon on Amazon

Two brothers, one name

Who Michael Lindy is

Michael Lindy is the pen name of two brothers, Robert L. Hiett and John M. Hiett. They grew up on a small farm along Silver Creek in Parker County, Texas. That farmland is the setting for The Long Road from Shiloh. The story, although fictional, is based on family history and stories handed down through generations. The farm and the roads are real places as is the church. The landmarks of the Minor family are ones the authors knew as boys. The two oaks still stand on the rise overlooking Silver Creek. Many of the characters were inspired by real people.

The Hiett family came to Texas from Alabama and Mississippi in the Deep South. The authors’ great-great-grandfather was a Confederate captain captured at Shiloh who was imprisoned for three years in the North. He owned land in Mississippi, and his family eventually migrated to Texas. Another great-grandfather was a farmer in Alabama who loaded a wagon and moved his family to grow cotton on a farm also in North Central Texas. Charles Minor is a creation drawn from the lives of these two men. Because of their heritage, the authors have read about the history of the Old South most of their lives. Texas history had held a particular fascination, especially the stories about Parker County and the long fight with the Comanche on that frontier. Sooner or later the two of them were going to write about it.

Robert L. Hiett

East Coast

Robert attended what is now the University of North Texas and went on to earn doctorates in journalism and in theology. He has lived on the East Coast for many years, but the first country he knew was the family farm on Silver Creek.

John M. Hiett

West Coast

John also attended what is now the University of North Texas. He spent his career working in technology. Through all those years he kept reading and studying Texas history, Parker County's above all. He lives on the West Coast.

The Minor Family Saga

One family, Shiloh to the present

The Long Road from Shiloh is the first book in a planned series. Each book carries the Minor family a little further forward, from the Silver Creek claim in 1867 to the present day.

  1. Book One · 1865 to 1875
    The Long Road from Shiloh

    The Minors leave Mississippi and make their claim on Silver Creek.

  2. Book Two
    In the works

    The next generation takes up the story.

News from Silver Creek

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