The Years

The hawk had improved his hunting skills tremendously, since those early days when Charles had tied dead mice to a piece of fishing line. Talon was a real hawk now, no longer an unsure juvenile trying to make his first kill on a mouse that was already dead. Where the Hawk Tree Stands is the story of a boy who finds a young Red-tailed hawk and raises it to maturity in the 1930s during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl years in Kansas. It's a story of their time together; the adventures they shared, dangers they faced, and the unbreakable bond of friendship that developed as a result of their caring and trust for each other. But, it's also a story about a difficult time in our nation's history, a story of the hardships and struggles, the disappointments and the heartaches faced by people who lived on, and farmed, the Plains and prairies of the American Southwest. It is about how they endured the Depression that plagued the nation, and the wrath of nature that plagued the Plains with drought, dust storms, and intense heat as they tried to eke out a living where the Hawk Tree stands.