Editorial Reviews

The BookViral Review:

L Z Rose’s A Tuft of Thistledown is a rare and exquisite novel—at once sweeping in scope and intimate in feeling. Set in the wake of the Trail of Tears, it threads together disparate timelines, deep emotional undercurrents, and a cast of unforgettable characters, centred around the haunting bond between two people once joined by childhood, now separated by politics, power, and history.

Horse Song, a Cherokee woman of mixed blood trying to protect her community from looming annihilation, lives in the hidden settlement of Oak Long Leaf with her young son Two and her husband Runabout. Her days are bound to the rhythms of the land, her people’s sacred traditions, and a quiet but fierce determination to survive what history is pressing upon them.

Stalking ever closer is John Lucas Jr., a wealthy landowner, political insider, and cold-blooded killer, whose childhood connection with Horse Song forms the novel’s aching emotional core. Their bond, though buried beneath decades of betrayal and violence, continues to ripple through their actions—especially his. Though he walks with calculated cruelty, the faint hope that Lucas Jr. might find redemption crackles through the pages like static. It’s this tension—between what he is, and what he once was—that keeps the narrative buzzing with urgency and dread.

Told across braided timelines, Rose crafts a story that is deeply spiritual, richly symbolic, and rooted in Cherokee cosmology without ever feeling like myth-making. The writing is reverent and immersive, flowing with the cadence of oral tradition. Golden horses marked with crescent moons, ancestral dreams, and spirits of the land lend the story an otherworldly texture that never drifts from its emotional realism.

The prose in A Tuft of Thistledown is superb. It’s delicate without being fragile, fierce without being loud. L Z Rose has an uncanny gift for writing what’s felt but unsaid. The language reads like it was meant to be heard aloud—in firelight, in prayer, in the quiet between breaths.

At its heart, this is not just a novel about genocide or resistance—it’s a story of love turned ghost, and the slow, sorrowful unravelling of what might have been. What makes it so haunting is that John Lucas Jr. is not merely a villain—he is a boy who once held Horse Song’s hand beneath the sun, and now walks in darkness. You want to hate him. And yet… some small part of you hopes he might turn around.

That’s the brilliance of L Z Rose. Readers are never allowed to forget what has been lost, or what might still be saved. But perhaps the novel’s most searing moments come in the closing chapters—sections so graphic, so viscerally unflinching in their portrayal of brutality, that they feel like raw nerve endings exposed to the air. Rose writes these scenes with such emotional precision and restraint that their impact lands like a silent scream. They are tragic, yes—but not just in content. The tragedy is also in the cost: what is lost, broken, and deformed in those moments of violence echoes far beyond the pages. These chapters do not exist for shock—they exist to expose the depths of man’s greed, and the irreparable cost of taking what was never his to claim.

A Tuft of Thistledown is an unreservedly recommended Golden Quill read.

A Tuft of Thistledown is a gripping historical novel that plunges deep into the brutal realities of the Trail of Tears. Set in 1839, the story follows a harrowing clash of cultures, where violence, survival, and the unyielding will to endure take center stage. Through raw and vivid storytelling, the book presents the perspectives of both the Cherokee people fighting to preserve their way of life and the white men determined to erase them. The novel weaves together historical accuracy and emotional intensity, capturing the pain of forced removal and the complex motivations behind acts of cruelty and resistance. What struck me most about this book was its unflinching portrayal of human suffering. The opening scene alone is enough to make your stomach turn; a one-eyed Cherokee man, bound and tortured, refusing to break. The descriptions are visceral, the emotions sharp as knives. It’s not just the violence that gets under your skin, though. It’s the way the characters grapple with their choices. The blacksmith, for example, torn between obedience and conscience, sneaks a bottle of whiskey to the dying man, only to later realize the man couldn't even drink it. That moment, small but devastating, is where the book shines. It makes you feel the weight of inaction, of complicity. Beyond the gut-wrenching pain, the novel’s pacing keeps you on edge. The sections with the Cherokee people offer a striking contrast to the brutal interrogations and raids. Scenes with Horse Song and Runabout, especially when she sees the white man at the eagles’ clearing, are filled with tension, but they also carry a quiet beauty. The descriptions of their hidden village, the careful collection of mulberries, and the intimate moments between families remind us of what’s at stake. And just when you start feeling safe, the book rips that away. The moment the children run screaming into the council house, yelling about white men, your heart stops right along with Horse Song’s. One of the most intriguing elements of the book is John Lucas Jr., a character you want to hate but can’t entirely dismiss. He is methodical, cruel, but also strangely haunted. The way he follows the golden foal, chasing echoes of a past he doesn’t fully understand, adds a layer of depth to his character. He is not a villain in the mustache-twirling sense but he is something worse. He is a man who sees himself as rational, as doing what needs to be done, and that makes him terrifying. His realization that the foal carries a crescent moon marking, just like a horse from his past, hints at a connection to the people he is hunting. That moment lingers, making you wonder how much of him is still human and how much has been lost to cruelty. I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates historical fiction that doesn’t hold back. If you are looking for a comfortable read, this isn’t it. The writing is sharp, the themes are heavy, and the emotions hit hard. A Tuft of Thistledown is an experience that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page. Literary Titan 5star

 A deftly crafted historical novel set in the American West as the backdrop to the clash between Native Americans and the every increasing forces of the Whites for how the land should be governed and who had the right to govern it, "A Tuft Of Thistledown" is an original, inherently fascinating and emotionally engaging action adventure from start to finish. Showcasing the author's (only known as Anon) distinctive, effective, and reader engaging storytelling skills, "A Tuft Of Thistledown" is especially and unreservedly recommended for community library Western & Historical Fiction collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this paperback edition from Caturro Publishing is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $3.79).
Editorial Note: Anon is the author's chosen pseudonym and is taken from the word 'anonymous', meaning: of unknown authorship or origin; not named or identified.

Jim Cox Midwest Book Review