Yesteryear

Yesteryear is a 1995 historical romance novel by bestselling writer Dorothy Garlock, the fourth book in her Wabash River series of interrelated (but standalone) stories. The second in the series, Dream River, is also set in Arkansas.

The story begins in the fictional Ozark Mountain town of Freepoint, Arkansas, in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. Yesteryear opens two months after war’s end. Addie Hyde is waiting for word from her husband Kirby, who had joined the Arkansas Regulars to fight for the Confederacy four years before, right after learning that Addie was pregnant. She has been managing the farm with her son (Dillon), two orphans (Colin and Jane Ann), and a (now) free Black woman named Trisha who is light-skinned enough to pass as white. Addie soon hears that Kirby had been killed and is buried in Jonesboro (Craighead County).

Meanwhile, John Tallman, a professional scout (and son of Rain Tallman, protagonist of Dream River, comes to Freepoint to pass the time before meeting up with Judge Ronald Van Winkle, newly appointed Indian agent for New Mexico, whom he has offered to let follow his wagon train out of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) back to New Mexico. After Tallman intervenes when two Confederate veterans show up at the Hyde farm one night with intent to rape Addie and Trisha, he stays on the farm to do some chores. Meanwhile, Addie ends up in a conflict with Preacher Sikes, the local minister who left the orphans in her care and now wants to take Colin to be with rich parishioner (and known pedophile) Ellis Renshaw.

The next day, Renshaw comes and tries to claim Colin by force, but Trisha shoots him in the thigh. John comes by soon after, patches Renshaw’s wound, and drives him home. Knowing that the Renshaws want revenge, particularly against Trisha, Addie resolves to sell the farm to one Mr. Birdsall. Soon afterward, Jerr “Buffer” Simmons, a hunter known to John who had already signed up as a hunter for the Van Winkle party, shows up at the house and apprehends a Renshaw sneaking around.

Addie soon realizes “how much she had come to depend on the tall, dark man who had thrust himself into her life,” and John proposes to her, suggesting that she and the family fill the empty hacienda he has back on Elk Mountain in New Mexico. They get married in the next town they pass through. Buffer and John manage to dump the four Renshaws following them into a creek before meeting the others at John’s freight camp.

Addie and John go to Van Buren (Crawford County), which, like Freepoint (rather anachronistically) has a train station. John finds Judge Van Winkle to be less than prepared for the trip but determined all the same to follow in Tallman’s wake with a group of Union soldiers. John and Addie stay the night in a hotel, and she realizes that she has come to love him. Back at the camp, Buffer (who quits the judge’s ill-prepared group and joins John’s crew) begins to woo Trisha.

As they depart, Addie comes face-to-face with a Union soldier named Kyle Forsythe who is the very image of her dead husband, Kirby; he is engaged to Judge Van Winkle’s daughter, Cindy. Later, John and Addie confront Kirby/Kyle, and he acknowledges the deception, stating that he had been raised in an aristocratic family and had to flee his home after having “violated” a local woman. He met Addie during this sojourn and stayed with her until the situation cooled down back home. He also reveals that he was already married when he went through the wedding with Addie, and thus her own marriage to him was invalid.

The epilogue concludes the book with the Tallman family arriving at John’s home in New Mexico exactly eighty-eight days after leaving Arkansas, with Buffer and Trisha being married along the way. John and Addie later have a daughter, while Buffer and Trisha have a son. Rain uses his influence to have Van Winkle removed from his position as Indian agent, and Kyle gets reassigned to a quartermaster post back east.

For additional information:
Garlock, Dorothy. Yesteryear. New York: Warner Books, 1995.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas