Render Unto God...

Render Unto God... is a peripatetic, episodic novel with two protagonists who juxtapose different visions of post-civil war America.

In the dog days of the war a Confederate Colonel’s family is brutally murdered by three renegade Yankee soldiers. The killers are sentenced to death, but escape justice when the town falls to the Union Army. With the ending of the conflict the colonel finds he has lost everything: his home, his slaves, his position in Southern Society... But more than anything, he mourns the loss of his family.

The colonel seeks solace in the Bible and becomes an itinerant preacher. And in so doing he finds Matthew 22:21: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's”. He takes these words to mean that the sentences passed by the Court on the killers of his family must still be carried out. For only then can the Lord have the opportunity to pass final sanction upon their souls. He resolves to track down the murderers, one by one. But first he has to find them.

In Abilene, Kansas, the Preacher meets Jackson Beauregard. Jackson is a rookie newspaper correspondent who has heeded Horace Greeley’s call that all young men should Go West. The pair form a testing friendship as they travel together through Kansas and on the Missouri River, Jackson seeking stories for his newspaper, the Preacher seeking to deliver Old Testament-style retribution on the killers of his family.

On their travels Jackson meets lawmen such as Wild Bill Hickok and “Bear River” Smith, and gets drawn into playing a con with the notorious riverboat gambler George Devol.

Jackson has a positive view about his and America’s future, unlike the Preacher, who laments the passing of the conventions of the antebellum South. On their travels Jackson tests the Preacher’s patience, his resolve, and eventually his faith.

As for the Preacher, he initially takes advantage of the young man’s naiveté, but grows more protective as their story progresses. However, just as he was absent when his family was killed, the Preacher is not around when Jackson needs him the most.