The Mercy Seat by Rilla Askew

The Lodi brothers move from Kentucky to Oklahoma as pioneers.  Although they are brothers, they could not be more different.  John, the younger, is a skilled blacksmith and gun maker, quiet and focused on his work and family.  Fayette, or Fate, is a big talker, a man who always has a ton of ideas on how he can get rich regardless of the legality of the ideas.  The journey is not their desire.  Instead, the Lodi families are moving out ahead of the law after Fate convinced John to make some guns that violated patent law. 

The families start out together but become separated on the trail.  Each family has multiple children.  Mattie is John's oldest, a daughter who chooses to go by a man's name and whose only desire is to be as much like her father as she can be.  The mother is a frail woman who grieves everyday for her Kentucky home with its refinement.  Fate has no patience with her and makes fun of her constantly.  When she gets ill and can't go on, Fate moves his family onward without John's family.  John's wife dies on the trail, leaving five children to be raised.

When the two Lodi families are reunited in Oklahoma, it is not with joy.  John and the children come with scarlet fever, and Fate's wife, Jessie, resents them from the start, worrying about her own family coming down sick as well.  The families never become close.  John finds work as a blacksmith, much to Fate's dismay.  Fate has plenty of ideas of things John could do with him but John isn't interested.  Not in Fate's ideas nor it seems in his own children.  They are left to raise themselves and do so with varying success.  The tension between the brothers increases until it leads to a tragedy, an 1800's version of Cain and Abel.

Rilla Askew, an Oklahoman herself, has written a compelling history of this time and place.  The characters are unforgettable and the story is bleak as was the fates of those who moved westward to find a better life, but who often only found pain and misery.  Modern parents will not relate to the way that children were expected to be miniature adults from a young age and how little time or effort was expended on raising them to be happy and successful.  This book is recommended for readers of historical fiction.