Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sioux Dawn | 1990 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 2 | Red Cloud’s Revenge | 1990 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 3 | The Stalkers | 1990 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 4 | Black Sun | 1991 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 5 | Devil’s Backbone | 1991 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 6 | Shadow Riders | 1991 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 7 | Dying Thunder | 1992 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 8 | Blood Song | 1993 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 9 | Reap the Whirlwind | 1994 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 10 | Trumpet on the Land | 1995 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 11 | A Cold Day in Hell | 1996 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 12 | Wolf Mountain Moon | 1997 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 13 | Ashes of Heaven | 1998 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 14 | Cries from the Earth | 1999 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 15 | Lay the Mountains Low | 2000 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
| 16 | Turn the Stars Upside Down | 2001 | Terry C. Johnston | Buy |
The Plainsmen series begins with Sioux Dawn (1990), a retelling of the Fetterman Massacre of December 1866, in which eighty U.S. soldiers were killed near Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Seamus Donegan, a recently arrived Irish immigrant with a military background and no particular loyalty to the army’s cause, becomes the recurring thread through all sixteen novels. He is present at engagements across more than two decades of frontier conflict, fighting alongside historical figures while remaining an outsider who never quite fits the official version of events.
What makes the series unusual among Western fiction is the scope. Johnston did not write a few books about famous battles. He wrote sixteen novels covering the full arc of the Plains Indian Wars from the 1860s through the 1890s, including many engagements that rarely appear in popular fiction: the Hayfield Fight, the Modoc War, the Red River War, the Battle of Adobe Walls, and the Dull Knife Battle. Each book is grounded in Johnston’s on-site research, and the geography of Wyoming, Montana, and the southern plains feels specific rather than generic.
The series concludes with Turn the Stars Upside Down (2001), which Johnston completed shortly before his death. It covers the aftermath of Wounded Knee and the end of the armed resistance of the Sioux. Taken as a whole, the Plainsmen books form one of the most detailed fictional accounts of the Indian Wars written by a single author.