The Whipping Boy — Speer Morgan

An “engaging” novel of hardship, danger, and frontier adventure in the Oklahoma Territory at the end of the nineteenth century (Publishers Weekly).
 
The Oklahoma Territory is a bleak, brutal place in 1894, especially for Tom Freshour, a half-Indian who knows nothing of the world beyond the orphanage where he's been raised by a sadistic minister who forces him to bear witness to a botched public hanging. But Tom is about to get a bracing education, thanks especially to two people: Jake Jaycox, an aging hardware salesman who takes Tom under his wing, and Samantha King, a beautiful, mysterious woman who attaches herself to the two men and promptly seduces Tom.
 
The adventures of this colorful trio begin with a horrific flood -- but the story turns darker when Tom and his companions run afoul of a scheme to steal thousands of acres from depression-ravaged farmers. Before long, they are being chased by a hired killer -- and Tom's searing memories of his childhood drive him back to the orphanage and a violent confrontation with the man who made him a whipping boy. As Tom learns more about the world around him, he suspects that the real villains in this unforgiving territory may not be the outlaws with six-guns, but the businessmen who will do anything to amass wealth and property.
 
“A rollicking page-turner. I read it once with a fierce compulsion to find out what would happen, a second time for the pleasure of the language and craft.” -- Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone
 
“Here is the real West in its lurid twilight -- the Oklahoma Indian Territory when the last land grab was under way. Here too is a good mystery [and] a bawdy romance. . . . Every vignette of frontier life -- flood, train wreck, blizzard, bank, brother, or church -- is authentic.” -- Will Baker, author of Hell, West, and Crooked
 
“Brings alive the pain and shame of a little-read chapter of history, when greed ruled, thievery wore a frock coat, and guile was the governing virtue.” -- Charles Gusewelle, columnist, The Kansas City Star