Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cry of the Hawk | 1992 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 2 | Winter Rain | 1993 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 3 | Dream Catcher | 1994 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
The Jonas Hook trilogy opens with Cry of the Hawk (1992), which introduces Jonah Hook, a young Confederate soldier who fought at Pea Ridge and Corinth before being wounded, captured, and sent to the prison camp at Rock Island. Faced with the choice of staying in prison or putting on a Union uniform to fight on the western frontier, he becomes a “galvanized Yankee,” one of the thousands of Confederate prisoners who served with the U.S. Army in the West. By the time the war ends, he knows the frontier well enough to survive it.
When Hook returns to his Missouri farm, he finds it abandoned. His wife and children have been taken by a group of Mormon Danites, and the trail has gone cold. The rest of the trilogy follows Hook’s search across the frontier West, tracking his family through a landscape that ranges from the high plains to the desert Southwest. Winter Rain (1993) and Dream Catcher (1994) complete the pursuit.
The series sits somewhat apart from Johnston’s other work in tone. Where the Plainsmen books are anchored to documented battles and campaigns, the Hook trilogy is more personal, a single man’s mission driven by grief and stubbornness rather than military duty. Johnston brings the same care for frontier detail to the setting, but the story moves at the pace of a chase rather than a campaign.